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

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Blakey.

This paper concerns the development of an interdisciplinary Project which studied 419 human remains at the 18th century cemetery for Africans enslaved in New York. The first World Archaeological Congress (1986) and Inter-Congress (1989) facilitated conversations among archaeologists and Indigenous peoples that would inspire change in archaeological practice. The African Burial Ground Project carried forward specific ideas of that encounter, joined with the activist scholarship and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Paul Goldstein.

In the absence of living interlocutors for the Andean Tiwanaku state society (AD 500-1000),we ask how Tiwanaku peoples imagined and reproduced themselves as social beings. A conventional view poses that Tiwanaku civilization at its apogee was unified by common membership in, or allegiance or aspiration to, an elite political culture, as evidenced by a high culture of specialized craft production, elite ritual functions, and religio-political iconography. This paper instead applies practice...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sonia Machause López.

The power of the underground has attracted ritual practitioners over the centuries. Natural places, such as caves, have some intrinsic sensorial power which helps to create a ritual atmosphere. In the Iberian Iron Age (6th–1st centuries BC), ritual production has been recognized in some caves through the identification of the material patterns, along with other physical and sensorial particularities. Although each cave is different, those cavities in which we find evidence of ritual practice...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Timothy Hare.

I present a preliminary analysis of movement through the Postclassic political capital of Mayapán. The architectural features at Mayapán are some of the most densely concentrated of sites in ancient Mesoamerica, but its organizational principles defy explanation. Almost two decades of fieldwork, including using electronic total stations, RTK survey-grade GNSS, UAV-based aerial photography, and an aircraft-borne LiDAR survey of a 40 sq km area centered on Mayapán's defensive wall, allows mapping...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jennifer Davis.

Soapstone was a valuable raw material for the production of items used in food preparation, including cooking vessels, in eastern North America before the development and spread of ceramic technology. Durable, waterproof, fireproof, nearly impervious to thermal shock and, at the same time, soft and very easy to extract and then sculpt into a desired shape the demand for this raw material was high but supply was geographically constrained. Designated a Connecticut State Archaeological Preserve in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrew Clark.

The Missouri River Valley is a unique landscape for horticulturist settlements. The semi-arid Great Plains have wildly fluctuating weather patterns and resulted in a difficult growing environment with frequent changes in productivity. The terraces of the river valley offered relatively flat areas for village planning, the terrace-forming flood waters refreshed the flood plains with nutrient rich sediment for village gardens, and the terrace breaks provided protection from both wind and invaders....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Patrick Ryan Williams. John Janusek.

In this paper, we focus on the relationships between landscape places viewed as ancestors to Andean communities and things that further political agendas in imperial contexts. We explore how objects and people work together to create or deconstruct political power in Wari and Tiwanaku societies. In particular, we focus on objects, including ceremonial ceramics and lithic monuments, as examples of things that participate in building power relationships with local communities. We argue that...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rosa Maria Varillas. Francesca Fernandini.

Some pre-Hispanic textiles were complex masterpieces made with labor-intensive techniques and high quality raw materials. Nevertheless, the vast majority of textiles, those used by the population at large, were plain, simple and without any decoration. This study will present a comparative analysis between a sample of plain weaves obtained from domestic contexts and a sample of high quality textiles excavated in an elaborated Wari tomb, all of them registered at the pre-Hispanic settlement of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mary Glowacki.

The Wari settlement of Huaro, located southeast of the Cuzco Valley in the Southern Highlands of Peru, contains a mortuary complex known as Cotocotuyoc. This towering plateau site, which overlooked the entire Huaro Wari settlement, was one of several urban components that made up a more than nine hectare Wari center, occupied for over 500 years. Excavations at Cotocotuyoc generated telling evidence for who built and occupied this settlement and how they were treated upon their deaths and in the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Scott Gajewski. Corry Laughlin.

Throughout two field seasons (2015-2017), the University of Montana and GAI Consultants (UM-GAI) conducted a Section 110 archaeological survey and evaluation project at Warren Grove Gunnery Range (WGGR), Burlington County, New Jersey (9,911 acres). The UM-GAI team completed archaeological survey of all accessible areas of the range making it one of the most expansive survey projects within the New Jersey Outer Coastal Plain. The study identified and evaluated a total of ten sites and recommended...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nelda Issa Marengo.

En Mesoamérica las representaciones gráficas sobre guerra, violencia y conflicto, son una constante que se encuentran en diversos sitios y en diferentes periodos. Para el Epiclásico (650-900 A.D) en el centro de México, y para el Clásico Tardío/ Terminal (600-900 A.D) en el área Maya, esta temática comienza a presentar cambios, tiende a ser más explícita y a compartir algunos elementos entre sitios contemporáneos. Chichén Itzá floreció durante este momento de cambios y muestra de ello es la...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jonathan Paige. Charles Perreault.

Acheulean large cutting tools were made across Africa and Eurasia for ~1.5 million years, and show surprisingly little variation for a technology so spatiotemporally vast. One explanation for this puzzling degree of conservatism is that Acheulean tools were not culturally transmitted but rather genetically determined. If this hypothesis is true, then Acheulean tools are more akin to animal technologies such as bird nests than to modern human tools. Here we examine the extent to which the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Emily Hammer.

Archaeology has long seen mobile pastoral societies as largely materially "invisible" both in the realms of portable artifacts and of infrastructure projects such as buildings and landscape modification. Recent studies have sought to alter this impression as part of larger trends that seek to ground our understanding of pre-modern pastoralists in concrete faunal, botanical, isotopic, landscape, and historical data, which clearly show the effect that pastoral practices and infrastructure have had...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Katherine Portman. Donna Glowacki. Kyle Bocinsky.

Water management is a critical concern in the arid landscape of southwest Colorado, particularly for farmers. As such, significant developments in water supply systems — like the construction of reservoirs — reflect the social, political, and economic climates in a community. Three reservoirs are located on Park Mesa in Mesa Verde National Park. These were originally documented during surveys in the 1970s and revisited after the Chapin 5 fire in 1996, but none have been analyzed beyond basic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alesia Hoyle. Sonia Alconini.

The qochas of the high-altitude Bolivian Apolobamba Puna region had a pivotal importance in the local agropastoral economies. Fed by snow melt and inner water sources, the qochas formed a complex hydrological system along the rich marshes. Although we do not know their origins, some of these qochas were modified during the Late Intermediate period, and a network of canals expanded in order to accommodate increasingly specialized pastoralism. Later the Inka arrival prompted specialized...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gyles Iannone. Pyiet Phyo Kyaw. Nyien Chan Soe. Saw Tun Lynn. Scott Macrae.

The IRAW@Bagan project is aimed at developing an integrated socio-ecological history for residential patterning, agricultural practices, and water management at the Medieval Burmese (Bama) capital of Bagan, Myanmar (11th to 14th century CE). As part of this long-term research program investigations have been initiated on the Tuyin-Thetso mountain range, located 11.25 km southeast of Bagan’s walled and moated epicenter. This upland area figures prominently in the chronicles of early Bagan, and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lauren Lippiello.

Shared iconography and similar functionality associated with dated depictions of Predynastic watercraft and terrestrial shrines identify watercraft as the earliest manifestation of manufactured sacred space in Egypt. The resulting Mobile Sacred Space Paradigm describes watercraft as ritual objects (liminal negotiators) empowered to move through and, thereby, connect three ecologically distinctive landscapes as early as the Naqada IIB Period (and possibly Naqada IC). Results indicate that...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Thomas Sheridan. Stewart B. Koyiyumptewa.

As Native peoples assert their sovereignty over intellectual property as well as land and water, relationships between them and anthropologists are entering a new era characterized by collaboration as well as conflict. Ethical anthropologists in North America recognize that they need to secure tribal/First Nations permission for their research. Sometimes permission is granted only for projects of interest to the tribes themselves. And sometimes publication of that research for a wider audience...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Betsy Bradley.

The archaeological component of the National Historic Preservation Act Section 106 consultation embodies an intersection of power that has privileged archaeologists and their work at the expense of accomplishing all legal mandates and has elevated the practice of archaeology as a science above any need for negotiation for project-specific approaches. This cross-disciplinary conversation is necessary as the current situation increasingly affects the ability of other Cultural Resource Management...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jonathan Dubois.

Research in the highlands of Huánuco, Peru, has revealed rock art sites were used to establish, negotiate, and legitimize changing social relations for more than three millennia. Implementation of stylistic seriation bolstered by art from more securely dated archaeological deposits allowed for the development of a chronological sequence of rock art styles in Huánuco. The research revealed rock art played a prominent role in expressing changing social relations in the region. This paper focuses...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Niels Lynnerup. Damgaard Peter. Hansen Henrik. Morten Allentoft. Ashot Magaryan.

Destructive analyses of human remains, i.e. analyses dependent on small biological samples from human, archaeologically found, bone or teeth, have yielded important new data and added to knowledge about our past. Yet, more studies generate even more studies, and the demand is clearly rising for more samples made available. This is especially the case for those collections, which are very unique in terms of geography (Greenland) or time period (Danish mesolithic). At the same time, these unique...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jacqueline Cook.

The assumption was made that because the Ancient One was so old, and because the court deemed him not "Native American", the Claimant Tribes had no connection to him, and, therefore, no concern for him. Those assumptions were proven to be incorrect. Evidence demonstrating the Cultural Affiliation of the Ancient One to the Claimant Tribes can be found within the disciplines of indigenous knowledge, geography, biology, archaeology, anthropology, linguistics, folklore, oral tradition, and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Patricia Wattenmaker.

Stratified occupational remains at mounded sites of third millennium Mesopotamia afford a temporal perspective on houses and institutions, as well as fluctuations in their resources. This paper draws on such data to evaluate the ways that houses and institutions accrued wealth and enhanced inequalities. Evidence for the production, circulation and storage of food and craft goods in early Mesopotamia informs about the kinds of resources used for wealth building, the processes through which goods...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrew D. Turner.

In a myth that provided a charter for Mexica domination of Central Mexico, the deity Huitzilopochtli defeated his foes with a spear-thrower in the form of a fire serpent, or Xiuhcoatl. While Huitzilopochtli was a being unique to the Mexica, the Xiuhcoatl is generally considered to derive from an earlier entity referred to as the Teotihuacan War Serpent. Although the influence of Teotihuacan symbolism on later cultures of Central Mexico is undeniable, the portrayal of solar deities with...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Paula Ugalde. Calogero Santoro. Eugenia M. Gayo.

Surficial archaeological sites are widespread in arid environments. However, due to the difficulties in numerically dating them, they are usually considered as coarse indicators of past behaviors. Here, we explore the use of lithic weathering to develop local relative chronologies, and to better incorporate these assemblages into archaeological research. We test whether the most weathered artifacts should be considered the oldest; an assumption that has informally served to compare assemblages....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Martin Menz.

The transition to Weeden Island mortuary and ceramic expressions along the Florida Gulf Coast also coincided with a shift in settlement. During this interval, around A.D. 600-750, earlier Swift Creek shell rings were abandoned and Weeden Island rings established nearby. In many cases, these Weeden Island shell rings were substantially larger than their predecessors, however, some anomalously small, isolated Weeden Island rings have also been recorded, such as the Old Creek Shell Ring (8Wa90) in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Perry Gnivecki. Mary Jane Berman.

"Were the Lucayans a creole society?" Can creolization be inferred from Lucayan material culture during the Early and Late Lucayan Periods? Through the examination of ceramics and other remains, such as duhos and shell and stone artifacts, we will attempt to determine whether this was the case. Can Lucayan cultural expressions, unique to the Bahama archipelago, be viewed as byproducts of the processes of creolization, and if so, why?

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gerardo Gutiérrez. Mary E. Pye.

In this paper, we address the role of leaders and their communities during the performance of ceremonies associated with rain petition in a network of caves located in the Mixtec-Tlapanec-Nahua region of Eastern Guerrero. We present newly discovered archaeological evidence in the caves of Pozo de Muerto, Casa de la Lluvia, Cauadzidziqui, Juxtlahuaca and Gobernadores de Techan, as well as ethnographic analogy to shed new light on the use of caves as arenas of ritual and political performance from...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Bradley Ensor.

The Mesoamerican Gulf Coast figures prominently in grand schemes of interregional population interactions from Olmec to contact eras. However, most models of exchange, migrations, or identities rely on samples from Southern Veracruz, the Usumacinta, and the southern Isthmus without considering the vast Chontalpa in-between. This paper synthesizes new and old data on sites, intrasite spatial organization, and material culture from the Mezcalapa Delta for a synopsis on prehispanic settlement...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Geoffrey Smith. Derek Reaux.

Western Stemmed Tradition (WST) projectile points mark Late Pleistocene/Early Holocene occupations in the Great Basin. Considerable morphological variability exists among WST points and over the years researchers have come to recognize various types (e.g., Cougar Mountain, Haskett, Parman, and Windust). Because most substantial WST sites are near-surface scatters that likely represent palimpsests of multiple occupations, it remains unclear whether this variability reflects tools used during...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cece Saunders.

How did man, horse and wagon traverse the muck and marshes that so often surrounded America’s earliest coastal towns? Without the benefit of iron, steel, and concrete, the 18th century road builder could span muddy stretches with a corduroy road. This road type was made by placing whole, sand-covered logs perpendicular to the direction of the road in low or swampy areas. The corduroy road was an essential technique for establishing networks between communities and critical resources. The Ash...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Eugenia Ibarra.

Archaeologist Francisco Corrales and myself recently undertook the study of the exploitation of natural resources and their exchange in the areas close to Juan Vázquez de Coronado´s route in 1564, traced from the Pacific coast to the Caribbean in Southeastern and Southwestern Costa Rica. This presentation aims to underline how resources of the different altitudes on both slopes formed an important part of the various activities carried out by the inhabitants during the 16th. century and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Madeline Mackie.

There has long been a debate about the frequency of megafauna hunting or dismemberment by early Paleoindians in North America. Proposed megafauna kill sites are heavily scrutinized. Sites which contain limited artifacts, but no projectile points are often discounted or classified as ‘possible’ kill sites due to their limited cultural materials. This begs the question, just how likely (or unlikely) are artifacts to be accidentally associated with megafauna remains? Using a computer model, the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Yongshan He. Chen Shen.

One major shift in mortuary practices that happened over the Han dynasty (202 BCE-220 CE) China, from burying bronze/pottery vessels to burying miniaturized architectural models, was usually explained as a result of the contemporary ideology of "treating the dead as alive", or as a reflection of the social-economic transformation. While these previous interpretations invariably presumed that artifacts were passive representations and projections of ideological/social conditions of their...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Teresita Majewski. Kenneth Aitchison.

SAA has an ambition to investigate the demographics of the archaeological profession in the Americas, looking to bring together knowledge and advice on how the profession of archaeology (in cultural resource management, academic, government, museum, self-employed, and other contexts) is structured throughout North, South, Central America, and the Caribbean. SAA has now carried out the first step toward this goal, which has been to carry out a targeted pilot project, gathering data on...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Hideyuki Nishizawa.

Dramatic culture change occurred in the Central Andes at the onset of the Middle Horizon (MH) (AD 500-1000). During this period, a state society emerged in the Ayacucho Valley and expanded across Peru. Even before the emergence of this state, however, culture contact of the Ayacucho heartland had already started with some remote regions in the late part of the Early Intermediate Period (EIP). This far-reaching contact would have gradually been intensified toward the beginning of the MH. Indeed,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Fanya Becks.

As archaeologists in Central California shift towards understanding indigenous agencies within the indigenous landscapes of colonial contact (Panich and Schneider 2015) an opportunity has arrived for the field to consider the practical implications of autochthonous Central Californian relationships and ontological perspectives for research praxis. The question posed in this paper, is what are rocks as interlocutors in relationships; how do you think of a rock when it is a part of a place that is...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Shannon Horton.

The purpose of this research is to examine the ceramic assemblage present at the Steve Perkins site, located in the lower Moapa Valley of southern Nevada. A full analysis of the ceramic assemblage has never been undertaken. Thus the goal of this research is to fully analyze the assemblage. Thereby providing more information on the lifeways of the Virgin Branch Puebloan (VBP) people residing at the Steve Perkins site. In addition, the examination of possible trade wares will also help to better...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elizabeth Bollwerk. Lynsey Bates. Leslie Cooper. Jillian Galle.

The Digital Archaeological Archive of Comparative Slavery (DAACS) is a Web-based initiative designed to foster inter-site, comparative archaeological research on slavery throughout the Chesapeake, the Carolinas, and the Caribbean. The goal of DAACS is to facilitate research that advances our historical understanding of the slave-based societies that evolved in the Atlantic World during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In this paper we argue that the digital methods encapsulated within...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ora Marek-Martinez.

The fight for inclusion of Native Americans in archaeology and anthropology hasn’t been an easy road; it has been divisive, contested, and sometimes violent. The need for allies and advocates for Native American inclusion in the field has become apparent through the tireless work of Larry Zimmerman. His scholarship has shaped generations of archaeologists and anthropologists in numerous ways. The ethical dimensions of his work are a testament to the need for change in the field and are a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brittany Fullen.

Excavations at the Middle Horizon (AD 500-100) capital city of Huari in the summer of 2017 focused on understanding processes of urbanization and the resulting realities of everyday life in the domestic sector of Patipampa. Several of the architectural spaces exposed during excavation were more intensively investigated. This paper focuses on the architectural space containing niched walls in order to understand how the Wari utilized this type of space in comparison to the uses of the other...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Amanda Lane. Katherine Cynkar. Kimberly Kasper. Anthony Graesch.

Uncharred botanicals are commonly found on archaeological sites but seldom assigned interpretive significance owing to their assumed ambiguous origins. Thousands of uncharred, fragmented Sambucas racemosa (red elderberry) seeds have been recovered at Welqámex, a Stó:lō-Coast Salish settlement in the Upper Fraser Valley of southwestern British Columbia. In Stó:lō-Coast Salish territory and beyond, Sambucas was used as both a food and a medicine. Owing to the presence of cyanide-like...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brandy Norton.

In order to gain a better understanding of the faunal diet composition of Native Americans in south-central Florida, an examination was conducted to determine which types of animals appeared most frequently within tree island assemblages. Of the 19,149 bones examined from a 2016 excavation, all were identified to at least an animal’s taxonomic order, although identification to the species level was usually not possible due to the fragmentary nature of the sample. This information was compared...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Matthew Pailes.

Analysis of Contact Era ethno-historical accounts has played an outsized role in the interpretation of protohistoric Sonora, Mexico. Controversy surrounds interpretations, owing to incongruities between archaeological and textual data as well as disagreements over how to weight the disparate observations made in these documents. Modern researchers variably evaluate the biases, motives, and the overall truthfulness of the authors of these documents. Another issue is the general subjectivity...

DOCUMENT Citation Only J. Anne Melton. Emily Briggs. Kele Missal.

Often in the study of stone tools, without the application of microarchaeological studies and the presence of microwear, little is left to distinguish how the tool was used originally and what the tool may have been processing. Was it used for scraping? Sawing? Slicing? Was it slicing bone? Scraping animal hide? Is it even possible for archaeologists to discern such behaviors from the tool without having access to definitive microwear traces and/or residues? In this study, we test whether the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Robert Cook.

There were two distinct cultural systems in a key part of the Fort Ancient region – Anderson and Madisonville – with the general understanding that one changed into the other in situ ca. AD 1400 and then left the region en masse ca. AD 1650, becoming one of several contemporary Central Algonquian tribes. However, new data raise the possibility that this interpretation needs revision. First, through a biodistance analysis we learn that at least some Anderson and Madisonville groups were not...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rujana Jeger. Darcy Morey.

Throughout prehistory, dogs and humans have sometimes been interred together in the same grave, in different locations in the world. This practice raises the question of why this practice was so prevalent. Circumstances leading to this practice were variable, but its consistency suggests an underlying factor in common. Using one of the earliest known cases as a point of departure, Bonn-Oberkassel from Germany, we suggest that this underlying factor in common is that dogs and people were regarded...

DOCUMENT Citation Only D. Gibson.

Several debates have endured for decades within the field of anthropological archaeology as to the character of lowland Classic period Maya political organization. Scholars have been struck by the contrast between Maya regal-ritual centers possessed of impressive monumental architecture with the minimal references from the documentary record to any kind of bureaucratic organization. There is disagreement as to the scale of the larger Maya polities and whether or not some polities had begun to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Hansen.

The Division of Anthropology at the American Museum of Natural History launched its first online database in 1995. The image-oriented interface proved attractive to an audience with a moderate level anthropological background. Later, in response to numerous requests, unimaged archaeological collections with more technical data were offered through a password protected interface. As of September 2017, 250,000+ files with images were publicly available, the combined online database representing...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ashley Parker. Lisa Johnson. Kate Magargal. Marianna Di Paolo. Brian Codding.

The (re)introduction of the horse to North America brought dramatic changes to American Indians. However, not all populations were affected equally; the horse became central to some societies, but had seemingly little effect on others. This variation is seen across Great Basin ethnographic groups, where some populations adopted the horse for transportation and hunting, while others ignored or even ate the horse. Some argue that this variation is the result of environmental constraints: where the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Patrick Rivera.

Given the impressive variety of objects produced and used by most ethnic groups, why do some forms of material culture--but not others--come to be identified as signs of ethnic identity? Who makes these identifications, and what sort of work do they do? This paper examines how particular historic artifacts (or representations of them) have come to signify an Irish or Mexican ethnic identity in the contemporary imagination, what role archaeologists have played in this process, and what this might...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alice Samson. Jago Cooper.

Multiple episodes of identity transformation can be seen in the archaeology of Mona island. From the emergence of "Taino-ness" (cf. R. Rodríguez) in the 12th century, to the catastrophic (after S. Mintz) eruption of colonial identities in the 16th century. We contrast the dynamics and character of creolizations from a diachronic and material perspective by looking at the archaeology of 500 years of subterranean ritual landscapes of Mona. We ask whether an expanded use of the term creolization is...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kevin Lane.

Spanish conquest of the Andes commenced in 1532 and, for all intents and purposes, was over by 1572. Yet, this somewhat simplifies the story. Throughout the Andean region, but especially away from the early strongholds of Spanish power, such as the towns and cities, conquest was a mixture of appropriation and negotiation. Drawing on research from the Ica Highlands (South-central Peru) and the Cordillera Negra (North-central Peru) this paper examines how Spanish religious orders initially...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brooke Morgan.

The smallest pieces of chipped stone flaking debris are often overlooked in the analysis of hunter-gatherer camps. Several factors account for this, including recovery methods, research focus, and time and cost allotted for a project. At shallowly-buried sites where features have been obliterated, concentrations of microrefuse have the potential to reveal in situ activity areas or secondary deposits formed by batch dumping. This paper presents a case study of the Mountaineer Folsom site near...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Deni Seymour.

Data sources, including documentary and archaeological, represent rich caches, full of mundane descriptions and an occasional succulent morsel that adds to the richness of our understanding of the past or potentially changes those understandings in fundamental ways. Yet facts are situated in frameworks of conventional wisdom, existing reconstructions, methodological practice, and extant data. Many substantial advances effectively and critically combine the particular with the generalizable,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Karen Garrard.

The Overmountain Victory National Historic Trail is a Revolutionary War route used by an estimated 1,040 patriot militia during the Kings Mountain campaign of 1780. It totals approximately 272 miles from the mustering point near Abingdon, Virginia, to Sycamore Shoals (near Elizabethton, Tennessee); from Sycamore Shoals to Quaker Meadows (near Morganton, North Carolina); from the mustering point in Surry County, North Carolina, to Quaker Meadows; and from Quaker Meadows to Kings Mountain, South...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alice Wolff.

The importance of alcohol in the landscape of feasting has been well documented across cultures, and early medieval Europe is no exception. The mead-hall in Anglo-Saxon Britain functioned as a location where social bonds were strengthened both vertically and horizontally; Vikings in Iceland relied on barley beer to demonstrate the power and generosity of chieftains. Production of alcohol in the large quantities required for feasting necessitates some degree of specialization, but to what degree...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Laura Hernández.

In the 19th century there was a large influx of people traveling to Puerto Rico, many stayed in lodgings throughout the capital city of San Juan. This study focuses on the hotels, guest houses and hostels within the walled city, currently known as Old San Juan, during the late 19th century and early 20th century. Using primary sources that include photographs, maps, blueprints and newspaper advertisements, the goal of my research is to establish the location of this type of businesses. Also, to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Adam Sellen.

In the second half of the nineteenth century, before the era of professional archaeology, those interested in the evidence of the past collected, and on an unprecedented scale. Most of these massive holdings have been since acquired by public museums around the world, where they have been co-mingled with other collections, and in the process, objects have been severed from their historic moorings. Focusing on Mexican collections, this talk looks back on a decade of work in museums and archives...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Aurelio López Corral.

Scholars have acknowledged, for many decades, that Late Postclassic Tlaxcalla (n1250/1300-1519 A.D.) was a state level political entity ruled by a form of collective government having Camaxtli as its main patron deity. Both conceptions are constantly reproduced in academic work although they derive explicitly from sixteenth century historical sources. Unfortunately, few works have undertaken the task of contrasting colonial writings against archaeological evidence in order to test if such...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elijah J. Hermitt. Kirk D. French. Carly Hunter. Cayt Holzman. Caitlin Donahue.

Since the mid-nineteenth century, the vast majority of local whisky production has been unregulated and illegal. Both production and distribution of illicit liquor moved underground with the passing of the 18th Amendment – known as the Prohibition – in 1919. This economic shift occurred in tight-knit mountain communities where knowledge has been vigilantly guarded. This continuous whisky production cycle has resulted in the deep social, economic, and cultural ties that persist in the Cataloochee...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rebecca Simon. Shanna R. Diederichs.

Crow Canyon Archaeological Center’s latest project, the Northern Chaco Outliers Project (NCOP), continues the tradition of research around the theme of community. The Lakeview group is one of the densest concentrations of great houses in the central Mesa Verde region of southwest Colorado. The group includes three sites, the Haynie site (5MT1905), the Ida Jean site (5MT4126) and Wallace Ruin (5MT6970). The NCOP focuses on community development, social stratification, and identity formation at...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christopher Lanza. Amanuel Beyin. Erik R. Otárola-Castillo.

There is a broad paleoanthropological consensus that hominins left Africa multiple times during the Pleistocene, but the geographic routes through which they exited the continent remains unclear. Although the Sinai Land Bridge and the Strait of Bab-al-Mandab on the southern end of the Red Sea are commonly implicated as the likely pathways used by early humans during their expansion out of Africa, the evidence supporting each route is still much debated. Here, we identify viable pathways for...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dougless Skinner. Paul Williams Sr.. Holly McKinney. Michael Koskey.

This study explores how indigenous archaeological methods can quantitatively assess prehistoric subsistence practices in interior Alaska. Archaeological sites in Alaska are among the oldest in the Americas, providing valuable information concerning human/animal interactions. Although there are substantial amounts of archaeological information present in the literature, there is a distinct lack of indigenous ecological knowledge. The goal of this project is to combine traditional indigenous ways...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Justin Jennings. Patricia Knobloch. Elizabeth Gibbon.

At the beginning of the ninth century AD, a Wari-affiliated settlement was founded in the Sihuas Valley of southern Peru. Celebrants ritually smashed face-necked jars when they abandoned the site less than a century later. These vessels likely represent elites or ethnic groups in the Wari sphere - agents whose associations in conflict or cooperation can be used to tell a more dynamic story of the founding of Quilcapampa during this turbulent era of Wari state expansion. This paper uses social...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nicole Boivin.

While there is little doubt that we currently live in an era in which humans have become the dominant force shaping climate and environments globally, the question of when we entered this era has become a contentious one. Many archaeologists argue for an early start date, but have been largely excluded from geology-driven discussions by the Working Group on the Anthropocene. Does this matter? This paper will explore this question, and consider more broadly the place of archaeology in shaping...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erin Donovan. Jeremy Wilson.

The Orendorf site is a Mississippian village and mortuary complex located in west-central Illinois. Salvage excavations between 1970 to 1990 have yielded one of the largest and best-preserved skeletal assemblages in the central Illinois River valley. The human skeletal assemblage from the Orendorf site has been ideal for a wide variety of bioarchaeological research, both invasive and non-invasive. Despite the attention given to the individuals, research focusing on the burial contexts and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kenneth Aitchison.

There are shortages of professional archaeologists in many African countries. It is a widely held view that there just aren’t enough professional experts in Africa to carry out the work needed in projects, both large and small, that are affecting African cultural heritage and landscapes. And these views are relevant, and important, and true – but they are often anecdotal rather than evidence-based. The first step in building capacity is to measure current capacity, then to use the results to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Braun. Matthew Douglass. Benjamin Davies. Jonathan Reeves.

Large scale surface surveys represent singular insights into the landscape scale variation in behaviors. Detailed investigations of the spatial distribution of artifacts across large spatial extents allow archaeologists to investigate a landscape as a single site. Surface assemblages have the advantage of large sample sizes and large aerial extents. However, biases associated with the formation processes of surface assemblages often undermine our confidence in the behavioral inferences derived...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nicole Slovak. John Rick.

Since 2009, the Programa Arqueológico Chavín has unearthed a series of historic burials from the Monumento Arqueológico Chavín de Huántar. Although the identity of the deceased remains a mystery, initial archaeological and ethnographic evidence suggests that the individuals may be casualties of the War of the Pacific (1879-1883), perhaps even Chilean soldiers who met an unusual and unfortunate fate at the hands of Chavín’s residents. The current paper presents radiogenic strontium isotope...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Melissa Torquato.

The evolution of the genus Homo is characterized by the emergence of numerous biological and cultural traits including bipedalism, encephalization, and language. A more recent adaptation led humans to transition from a foraging subsistence strategy to one based on farming. This is significant because foraging persisted for approximately 95% of human existence until farming emerged about 12,000 years ago. For nearly a century, anthropologists have studied the foraging-farming transition and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Patricia Netherly.

In the last 1000 years before the arrival of the Spanish in 1532, the expansionist states of the Andean region of Peru—like those of the Old World--appear to have grown incrementally, flourished briefly, and disappeared. Despite intensive study in the 1970’s and since, the inner structure and dynamics of Chimor have eluded archaeologists because there is limited information from European observers and because there are many questions archaeologists have not yet addressed. At its maximum, Chimor...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michelle Bebber. Michael Wilson.

In biology the concept of theoretical morphology has been used as a heuristic device for better understanding the evolutionary trajectories of organisms. Theoretical morphology proceeds by creating and examining hypothetical specimens not actually found in nature. So instead of asking "why does feature X exist", a theoretical morphological approach asks "why doesn’t feature Y exist?". Here, we use this approach to address the question of why ceramic technology did not evolve to replace stone...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Byron Loosle. Ranel Capron.

Tribal officials suggest the National Historic Preservation Act should more appropriately be called the National Mitigation Act. For several years we worked to develop policy to direct more effort into identification of areas of cultural concern even before projects proposals were received. We advocated production of appositely designed projects to reduce the amount of adverse effects and mitigation. This effort included encouraging the use of the planning process to assemble data and add...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Timothy Ives.

Supported by the U.S. National Park Service’s Historic Preservation Fund Program, the Rhode Island Historical Preservation and Heritage Commission administered surveys of coastal archaeological sites damaged by Hurricane Sandy in Rhode Island. This paper considers, from a management perspective, some of the unique constraints and challenges of this work, including incomplete property access, bureaucratic delays, and a Tribal collaboration that fell short. The insights provided by this...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Igor Chechushkov.

The case study comes from the southern Urals, Russia. Since 1970’s the walled settlements of the Sintashta archaeological culture (2000-1700 BC) have been interpreted as the fortified towns and centers of social life for the religious and war leaders of the local communities. However, settlements’ primary locations on the bottoms of the rivers’ valleys, as well as lack of other evidence for the warfare, cause doubts about such interpretation. Analysis of natural environments (e.g., local wind,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Julia Morris. Severin Fowles.

The nomadic tribes of the Plains—notably, the Comanche and Apache—are typically considered the main obstacles to the northern expansion of the Spanish empire in North America. But early Spanish settlers in New Mexico found themselves up against another formidable foe that has received far less attention in the literature: the wolf. Indeed, for an expanding pastoral society, the wolf posed perhaps the biggest threat to local economic welfare. In this paper, we report on the recent discovery of a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ora Elquist.

Locus 3 of the Strow’s Folly Site (19-PL-1161) in Wareham, Massachusetts represents a small, temporary camp. Archaeological investigations at the site resulted in the recovery of an unusual artifact assemblage believed to be associated with a single component dating to the Middle Woodland Period. Evidence for hunting was notably absent, and the presence of processing tools and relatively dense deposits of ceramics indicate that women were present at the site. Domestic activities associated with...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erica Hill.

Moche iconography depicts women in ritual roles as priestesses, objects of sacrifice, and possibly as deities; however, the roles of ordinary women have received much less attention from archaeologists. This paper explores the nature of women’s power in Moche society as represented in iconography and as inferred from bioarchaeological data, contrasting the roles of women in elite and non-elite contexts. With the exception of elite women performing rituals, Moche ideology inextricably linked...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Teresa Raczek. Namita Sugandhi.

Rita Wright’s transformative work on gender and women’s labor in West, Central, and South Asia provided an important framework for the archaeological study of craft production and the organization of labor. This interrogation of gendered practice was complemented by a parallel investigation of equity in academic archaeology, particularly through the work of the SAA’s Committee on the Status of Women in Archaeology. In addition to her research and professional service, another significant...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Patrycja Przadka-Giersz.

The second half of the first millennium A.D. witnessed some significant changes in gender roles and traditions in the Andes. The discovery of the first undisturbed burial context of fifty-eight noblewomen with hundreds of precious artifacts found at Castillo de Huarmey provides important evidence about women and their roles played in ancient society in the Wari Empire. The amount and the richness of the luxury and prestige items, which comprise hundreds of objects of the most diversified types,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Julia King.

How does one go about using legacy archaeological collections – or any archaeological collection, for that matter – for research? The prospect can be daunting, especially if you are staring down dozens of dusty boxes on shelves. This paper offers direction for studying even the most untamed collection by understanding it as a type of secondary data – lessons learned while working with legacy collections from the Potomac and Rappahannock river valleys in Maryland and Virginia. Secondary data, a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elizabeth Clay.

As a circum-Caribbean, non-island space on the coast of northeastern South America, French Guiana presents a distinct context in which to explore plantation slavery and Caribbean commodity production. The "sugar revolution" that overtook areas of the Caribbean at various historical moments reached French Guiana during the nineteenth century, yet monocultural production of the crop never took hold. Instead, plantations producing a variety of agricultural commodities including cotton, coffee,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Connie Randall. Meagan Dennison. Jay Franklin. Bruce Manzano. Renee Walker.

This paper describes the species diversity and taphonomic modifications of Woodland Period fauna from Upper East Tennessee. Fauna from both rock shelter and open-air locales from the Early Woodland (ca. 3000 years B.P.) to the Late Woodland (ca. 1000 years B.P.) period are used to characterize subsistence practices and site use in the region. In this paper, we present the MNI, NISP and measures of diversity, richness, and evenness of different animal species identified in the faunal assemblages...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rosemary Sucec.

The most challenging work begins with federal management of these "historic properties." The term belies that TCPs are managed not only for their physical integrity, but for their intangible, associative values vital to maintaining the contemporary identities of indigenous and other traditional communities. Consequently, rather than merely relying on determinations by agency professionals of issues related to boundaries, integrity, adverse/cumulative effects and mitigation, it becomes imperative...

DOCUMENT Citation Only William Mitchell.

I was not involved directly with Scotty’s Ayacucho project (1969–1975), but from 1965 to 1968 I worked in the town of Quinua, engaged in dissertation research. Its territory included part of the site of Huari. After completing my dissertation, I returned to continue work in 1973, 1974, and 1980, and later, focusing on its ecological system, especially irrigation. Scotty invited me to prepare a paper on the ways farmers used ecological zones. The research, while more detailed, complemented what I...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Lowry. Shawn Patch. Lynne Sullivan.

Under contract with the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), New South Associates, Inc. conducted comprehensive geophysical surveys of five Mississippian sites in the Tennessee River Valley between 2013 and 2017: the Bell Site (40RE1), the Cox Mound (1JA176), Hiwassee Island (40MG31), Ledford Island (40BY13), and Long Island (40RE17). The Works Progress Administration (WPA) conducted salvage excavations on all of these sites in the 1930’s and the information available from their notes and limited...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Peterson.

Nan Madol monument in Pohnpei in the Federated States of Micronesia was inscribed on the World Heritage list in July 2016. The same day it was listed on the Endangered List for World Heritage sites by the Committee. The designation was meant to insist on the seriousness of conservation and management planning and it has had a profound impact. A Conservation Plan has been launched, supported in part by UNESCO, and fine-grained monitoring with geocontrols, 3-D mapping, UAV structure-in-motion...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michelle Knoll.

In spite of the broadly recognized importance of associated records, they are often the last part of a collection to be organized, catalogued, and stabilized. Disorganized, or "lost" associated records are a source of frustration for researchers and collection managers alike. Conversely, well-organized and accessible associated records have many benefits to artifact collections including an increase in research potential, a legal foundation for ownership and control, and greater interpretive...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kristen Jeremiah. Dianna Doucette.

The Acushnet LNG Site is a multicomponent Native American campsite located along the Brayton Point peninsula in southeastern Massachusetts. Brayton Point extends into the Mount Hope Bay, at the confluence of two major rivers - the Lee and Taunton rivers - an area with numerous documented Native American campsites and ceremonial sites. Cultural resource management investigations identified an extensive archaeological site, measuring a minimum of 71,000 square meters, that was occupied from the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Purcell.

The Museum of Northern Arizona and National Park Service, Flagstaff Area National Monuments conducted a cooperative baseline documentation and condition assessment of four sites in Wupatki National Monument 2014-2017: Crack-in-Rock (WS831), Middle Mesa (WS833), Horseshoe Mesa (WS834), and WS835. The fieldwork component of the project comprised high resolution film and digital photography of 374 petroglyph panels and 4,004 elements, completion of narrative and tabular data collection forms for...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marieka Arksey. Paddington Hodza. Greg Pierce.

The University of Wyoming Archaeological Repository (UWAR) is the largest archaeological collection and the only federally-regulated repository in Wyoming, providing an unprecedented centralized location for researchers and the public to discover and engage with the 16,000 years of human occupation in this part of North America. However, the current collections management system at UWAR does not facilitate public dissemination of this data, nor does it enable curatorial staff the ability to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Monica Dyer.

Little documentation exists of the trade exchange occurring in the central Piedmont during the 18th and 19th century at wealthy plantation sites or at surrounding sites of lower economic status. In this historical archaeology research, I focus on understanding the socio-economic patterns of settlers in the more rural areas of the region at two plantation sites and wasters from a local kiln site from same time period. Using pXRF data of lead glazed earthenware I attempt to map ceramic regional...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christopher Turnbow. Robert Forrester.

The XSX Ranch site (LA 50702) is a multicomponent occupation located on the East Fork of the Gila River in Grant County, New Mexico. Between 1980 and 1992, Robert E. Forrester, a chemist from Texas, excavated 10 pithouses, 32 pueblo rooms in five roomblocks, and 91 burials at the site. In his little-known excavation reports, Forrester suggested the site was a Classic Mimbres occupation reoccupied by a Reserve/Tularosa population; however, in a review of his data, the site may best be...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Luisa Esther Diaz Arriola.

This paper presents the results of a typology and iconographic analysis made on ceramic and textiles artifacts recovered at the Ychsma settlement of Armatambo. The Ychsma cultural affiliation of this archaeological site, which is located on a dense urban area south of Lima, is recognized in the literature (especially with the aerial photographs published by Kosok in 1965) but little detail has been published on the evidence of its affiliation and character of occupation. We can confirm that...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Metin Eren. Brian Andrews. Michelle Bebber. Ashley Rutkoski. David Meltzer.

The Paleo Crossing (33ME274) Clovis site in Northeast Ohio was discovered in 1989, and excavated in the early 1990s. Analysis of the collections over the past 27 years has shed light on Clovis technology, mobility, raw material transport, and forager colonization behavior. Now, armed with several new questions involving the site's chronology, Clovis tool function, and the possible presence of a Clovis "structure", we re-opened excavations at the site during June 2017. While more excavations...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Laura Matthew. William Fowler.

The first Spanish foothold in Guatemala took root during the first invasion of Guatemala led by Pedro de Alvarado in 1524 at the Kaqchikel city of Iximche. Historians regard this as the first capital of Santiago de los Caballeros de Guatemala. After its location at Iximche, Santiago had two sequential locations near Olintepeque and in Chimaltenango. The ruins of the first permanent Santiago de Guatemala, founded in 1527 in the Valley of Almolonga and destroyed in 1541, lie beneath the modern...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Larkin Hood.

Ideally, exercises and activities for an open textbook should encourage students to engage with and apply the information beyond a single course. This session provides a reflection on the process of designing resources that activate student motivation to engage with content, and provide checks on student understanding (for students and instructors). Activities are also a means for students to practice retrieving what they have learned so they can use it in other situations, and provide ways for...

DOCUMENT Citation Only C. Michael Barton. Julien Riel-Salvatore.

Mobility is a phenomenon of importance across all past and present societies. For hunter-gatherers, mobility structures ecological strategies, social organization, and response to environmental change. For prehistoric societies, we cannot observe mobility but it is possible to study it through a proxy record of discarded material items and biological remains that form the archaeological record. Increasingly archaeological practice has shifted from proposing intuitive links between mobility and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Aleksander Borejsza. Arthur Joyce. Jon Lohse. Isabel Rodríguez López.

We report the discovery and excavation of a site radiocarbon-dated to 3000 BC near the village of Yanhuitlan in Oaxaca. The site is buried under alluvium at a depth of 5m. At the time of its occupation it was situated on the floodplain of a large seasonal stream. The excavation of 30m2 revealed several superimposed features, including hearths, small refuse pits, and a bell-shaped pit. Debitage of different varieties of chert is ubiquituous, as is heat-spalled rock of different lithologies....