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

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Nowell.

The processes that drive socioeconomic and demographic growth over the course of generational occupations can be better understood by examining the variation in spatial organization at the household level. This study draws from the ethnographic record, ethnoarchaeological studies, and household archaeology to compare features from Housepit 54 at the Xwisten village, or Bridge River site in the interior of British Columbia. This site has been previously classified as a winter village and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Megan Conger. Jennifer Birch.

Magnetic gradiometry is an affordable and preservation-minded method to detect a wide range of subsurface features at historic and prehistoric archaeological sites. Horizontal excavation is the only way to confirm the nature of features detected by magnetic gradiometry, but in some cases may be impossible or undesirable. Excavation-based understandings of local architectural practices can be used to infer the nature of magnetic anomalies, as long as those understandings encompass the full range...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Beth Sheehan.

Journal publishers are poised to influence and be influenced by disciplinary attitudes toward data sharing. A previous study of the relative strength or weakness of data sharing policies in journals that publish gene microarray expression data (Piwowar and Chapman, 2008) found that stronger data sharing policies are generally associated with higher journal impact factors and an increased percentage of articles with shared and available data. In fact, even the presence of a "weak" policy...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christina Halperin. Jean-Baptiste Le Moine. Enrique Perez Zambrano.

What are the temporal dynamics of water infrastructures? Recent research at the Maya site of Ucanal in Petén, Guatemala, has identified several water management features, such as canals, dams, baffles, and roads, many of which drain water away from the site core and towards a nearby river, the Río Mopan. The heavy focus on water drainage rather than water storage is seemingly incongruous with paleoclimate data, which reveal evidence of droughts during the height of the site’s occupation. This...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Benjamin Vis.

Maya urban archaeology is progressively addressing how to ‘people the past’, using data exploration techniques. The Chunchucmil map (Hutson and Magnoni 2017) offers an exemplary spatial data resource. Chunchucmil features here as a testing ground for showcasing the interpretive research advances enabled by Boundary Line Type (BLT) Mapping. BLT Mapping resulted from establishing a common frame of reference to make radical comparisons between Maya and contemporary urban patterns. The anticipation...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Zachary Stanyard.

Lowland Maya lithic studies have traditionally focused on the rise of specialization at large urban centers. While many of these studies have focused on form and function of the tools produced, few focused on the technological means of tool production. Maya lithic studies have been assumed a priori to have been created using traditional means of hard-hammer and billet reduction. This paper reviews current evidence for the use of hardwoods in the production of stone tools, as well as provide an...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Thomas Pozorski. Shelia Pozorski. Rosa Marin Jave.

Recent excavations at a number of intermediate-sized mounds of the Initial Period (2100-1000 B.C.) site of Taukachi-Konkán in the Casma Valley of Peru have uncovered surprising new evidence of clay friezes and architectural forms previously unknown for the Initial Period along the coast of Peru. One U-shaped mound complex has an associated sunken rectangular plaza that contains distinct friezes on all four of its sides. The content of the friezes includes two sea lions, a large feline and two...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrew Womack. Peter Coutros. Mamadou Cissé.

In the spring of 2017 geophysical remote sensing surveys were conducted across three locations at and around the Dakajalan sacred site, Commune Rurale de Sanankoroba, Mali in order to detect anomalies associated with archaeological features. This site has been described in oral tradition as the location where the battle that proceeded the formation of the Mali Empire took place, and also where the village that acted as the first capital of the newly formed empire was located. Surface survey of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rebecca Hummel. Katharine Alexander. George Crothers.

Extensive research has illuminated many aspects of the emergence of the Eastern Agricultural Complex, yet gaps remain surrounding the origin and spread of these early domesticated plants. The long-term goal of our research is to create a comprehensive, online database of accurately dated EAC plant samples similar to the Ancient Maize Map project (Laboratory of Archaeology, University of British Columbia). Compiling this chronology will contribute to our understanding of the social, economic, and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alejandro Chu.

Incahuasi, located at the mid-valley of the Cañete river, is the largest Inca administrative center reported from Peru's Central Coast. Although first built as a military base by the Inca Tupac Yupanqui in his war against the Guarcos, the site was completely transformed into an administrative center with an extense and prominent storage facility. Recent research at the site has focused in Sector B, described as an elite residential complex. Excavations have found a significant number of finished...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Matthew Warren.

As the Inkas expanded their imperial hegemony over the valleys of the eastern Andes, their armies fought and then forged political and military alliances with the various cultural groups comprising the Charkas confederacy. While the Spanish chronicles and local ethnohistoric sources attest to these events and to the important role the local indigenous populations played in Inka colonization efforts along the eastern imperial frontier, they are all curiously silent on another important population...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Amber Anderson.

When the Inka moved into Northern Ecuador at the end of the 15th century, they were met with fierce resistance from the semi autonomous societies of the Pais Caranqui. Chronicler accounts and Inka narratives note that conflict occurred and fortifications were constructed before the Inka were eventually victorious and continued their conquest northwards. However, these accounts do not accurately highlight the true complexity of the groups the Inka encountered, the prolonged nature of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jessica Christie.

I will assess strategies employed by the Inka state in interactions with local populations in the Cañete Valley and adjacent valleys. The Spanish found two señorios in the lower Cañete Valley: the Lunahuana, whom they described as well organized and inclined to submit to Inka rule and the Guarco who lived on the shore, offered fierce resistance, and were brutally subdued. The Inka built Inkawasi in Lunahuana territory, envisioned as one copy of Cusco. Inka presence in Guarco territory is...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alexander Menaker.

States and empires attempt to incorporate and transform local landscapes and cultural practices in efforts to legitimize their social orders. Research on the Inka Empire in the Andagua Valley of the Southern Peruvian Andes has shown how these processes are incomplete and become entangled with local practices and the stubborn materiality of history. This poster presents recent archaeological and anthropological research, identifying the reach and effects of Inka Empire and distinguishing local...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Trisha Biers. Marta Mirazón Lahr.

The Duckworth Collection is one of the world's largest repositories of human remains, numbering approximately 18,000 individuals. These range from blood samples, to hair bundles, single bones, complete skeletons, mummies, and decorated skulls, and are widely used for scientific research. Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, anthropological and biological research gave us a greater understanding of human diversity, much of it based on anatomical evidence. Cambridge was at the forefront of this...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Emily Hayflick.

This paper examines the ways in which humans create meaningful and enduring relationships with significantly unique environmental locations through a discussion of hot springs in the Rio Grande Gorge and Taos plateau. These springs demonstrate continual persistence as meaningful sites of visitation, of marking, and of cultural importance for those dwelling in the Taos area from the archaic to the contemporary. Through an exploration of the markings and constructions around the springs, I hope to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dewei Shen.

Processed from turtle shells and bovid scapulae, oracle bones were massively exploited by the ruling house of the late Shang Dynasty for divination. As opposed to traditional scholarship that holds primary interest in inscriptions engraved on these bones, I consider late Shang divination in entirety as a technological process that proceeds from the preparation and delivery of bone material via tributary networks all the way to bones’ after-use discard into pits. By switching the attention to the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lior Weissbrod. Yaron Dekel.

Research on the origins of animal domestication has relied heavily on the use of morphometric characteristics of skeletal remains as diagnostic markers for important shape and size changes, which supposedly signaled the beginnings of domestication processes. However, the utility of this approach for pinpointing the timing and geographic and cultural context of initial domestication has been recently questioned. This approach has been undermined by empirical findings from geometric morphometric...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stephen Uzzle. Karen Schollmeyer.

During the 2016-2017 Upper Gila Preservation Archaeology Field School, test excavations focused on the Gila River Farm Site [LA39315], located near Cliff, New Mexico. These excavations allow us to gain new insights into the Cliff phase (AD 1300-1450) in the upper Gila region. Despite evidence of looting and other disturbance, artifacts and data recovered here allow us to better understand several aspects of the Salado occupation of the site, including architectural styles, room function,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Manon Géraud. Florian Téreygeol. Florent Hautefeuille.

"Commingeoise", a Late Medieval domestic ware of southern France, is a very current but problematic diagnostic artifact, as it has thus far been poorly defined. The chronology of its production is first of all not precisely established. Furthermore, a simple macroscopic description has historically been used to identify this ceramic type. A more rigorous characterization is necessary in order to clearly define Commingeoise. Finally, although dispersed throughout a large and relatively...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Garrett Jones. Timothy Hare. Mike Dowell.

We describe an integrated heavy-lift unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) and remote sensing platform used to map archaeological features under the forest canopy in the northern Yucatán. We collaborated with Mobile Recon Systems Inc. to construct a UAV-based aerial mapping system that can be used to create high-resolution maps and 3D models of archaeological ruins, excavations, caves, and cenotes for small to medium-sized areas of the forested environment. The system integrates Light Detection and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kristina Douglass. George Manahira. Roger Samba. Voahirana Vavisoa. Felicia Fenomanana.

Since 2011 the Morombe Archaeological Project has undertaken archaeological survey, excavation and oral history recording in the Velondriake Marine Protected Area of southwest Madagascar. The project’s aims are to investigate diachronic human-environment dynamics and refine our understanding of the region’s settlement history by leveraging multiple scientific techniques and the collective historical and socio-ecological knowledge base of Velondriake’s living communities. The project is run by a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elizabeth Reetz.

The practice of archaeology involves studying human adaptation to the natural world by using the environment as a vehicle for the development of knowledge. Archaeology education has strong parallels and intersections with the well-established field of Environmental Education (EE); yet, it is both widely acknowledged that cultural history is one of the weaker components of EE, and many archaeology educators are likewise unfamiliar with EE. In 2016, archaeologists from University of Iowa Office of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Matthew Baker. Clare Bedford. David Robinson.

Molecular spectroscopy is an information rich technique that is rapid, non-destructive and easy to operate. These qualities combined with a mature market in handheld spectrometers makes molecular spectroscopy an ideal technique for on-site analysis which is suitable for austere environments. This paper will discuss the use of Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) and Raman spectroscopy to in the Gordian knot project based upon the Californian polychrome rock art site Pleito in order to provide a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Scott Simmons.

After a span of over twenty years archaeological investigations have resumed at the San Pedro site, located in downtown San Pedro, Ambergris Caye. Investigations in the early 1990s revealed portions of a Spanish contact period Maya community that was settled as early as the 14th Century CE. Based on previous as well as ongoing investigations at the San Pedro site and other Maya sites on the island and the mainland, it appears that communities on the caye were linked to one another in various...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ivor Karavanic. Antonela Barbir.

Paleolithic sites situated in the Hrvatsko zagorje region of north-western Croatia (Krapina, Vindija) are well known because they contain important finds of fossil human remains associated with both faunal remains and lithic industry. However, in recent years, work on Mousterian sites in Dalmatia (south Croatia) has intensified. It focuses on three types of sites, (caves, open-air, and an underwater site) as well as on a systematic survey of the region. This poster briefly presents one of each...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Florencio Delgado Espinoza.

According to the early Spanish chronicles, the Cañaris were a constellation of chiefdoms which fiercely challenged the Inka expansion to the north. Early Texts show that war and conflict was the way they interacted in the region. As a conquest strategy during Wayna Qhapac's rule, the Inkas built important infrastructure in their heartland, such as Tomebamba in Cuenca and Ingapirka in Hatún Cañar, in addition to other smaller sites along the Qhapac Ñan. However, the archaeological evidence for...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kurt Rademaker.

The Andean cordillera was one of the world’s last mountain regions to be colonized by hunter-gatherers. To date, the empirical evidence indicates an initial appearance of humans in the high Andes (up to 4500 m above sea level) in the Terminal Pleistocene, about 12,500 years ago. Early forager sites of the Andes exhibit a spectrum of settlement and mobility configurations, which constitute responses to the structure of resources in their specific habitats. Intriguingly, some of the earliest and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Julie Esdale. Ben Potter. Charles Holmes. Joshua Reuther. Holly McKinney.

Recent large-scale excavations at Delta River Overlook in the middle Tanana River basin yielded 12 components dating from the onset of the Younger Dryas (~12,860 cal BP) to the later Holocene (2300 cal yr BP). Well preserved faunal assemblages, including bison, are present in multiple components, with economic transitions evident at ~6000 cal yr BP. Several features and activity areas were analyzed, including ochre-rich processing areas. Over 20,000 lithic items have been analyzed, primarily...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rebecca Bria.

This paper combines assemblage theory with ritual economy in the study of long-term community formation at prehistoric Hualcayán, in highland Ancash, Peru. In particular, it explores how the people of Hualcayán interlinked and coordinated their practices of building, food production, and ritual consumption to assemble a Recuay community during the Andean Early Intermediate Period (AD 1–700). It traces the archaeological evidence of how religious ideologies, social group divisions, and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gregory Lockard.

This paper will provide an overview of international lender standards for cultural heritage and their implementation on development projects throughout the world. The paper will begin with a discussion of the history and objectives of international lender standards for cultural heritage. This discussion will focus on Performance Standard 8 (Cultural Heritage) of the International Finance Corporation (IFC) Performance Standards on Environmental and Social Sustainability (2012), as the Equator...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Charlotte King. Sian Halcrow. Andrew Millard. Vivien Standen. Bernardo Arriaza.

Maternal and infant care practices are deeply individual, as well as being affected by both cultural and environmental factors. Disentangling the various processes which lead to decision-making in the past is difficult, and bioarchaeologists must use multiple lines of evidence to begin to understand behaviours. New incremental isotopic techniques mean that it is now possible to look at individual maternal and infant experiences through tissue chemistry. However, incremental isotopic results are...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Krantz.

This paper examines what might be called the "palimpsest panel" rock art tradition of the northern Rio Grande region of New Mexico. Palimpsest panels are rock faces with petroglyphs that have accrued in a layered fashion through time. Prior research into such panels has typically focused on questions of chronology, each layer representing a distinct culture-historical era of iconographic production or a chapter in a linear chronology. Here, however, I move away from the traditional chronological...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nicholas Conard. Mareike Brenner. Knut Bretzke. Christopher Miller. Manuel Will.

Sibudu Cave in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa is a key Middle Stone Age site that provides a high-resolution stratigraphic record of cultural change. The sequence from Sibudu is well-dated and has been the focus of intense geoarchaeological research. This paper examines the spatial distribution of lithic artifacts, faunal remains, worked ochre, burnt materials and botanical finds to see if these distributions provide meaningful information on the changing use of space at the site. The study will...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rachel Tracey.

The northern Irish town of Carrickfergus, in the seventeenth century, was a thriving settlement; home to a mixed population of English and Scottish settlers, in addition to a local Gaelic-Irish population. As such, the excavated material evidence is particularly suited to considerations of how we interpret, and eventually ascribe, identity in the archaeological record. Cultural identity, and expressions of such identity – be that Irishness, Britishness, or Ulster Scottishness – lie at the heart...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrew Webster.

Archaeologists have long struggled with assigning specific artifacts to particular ethnic identity categories. This paper uses the artifacts of the nineteenth-century rural Irish poor to argue that identity is best considered intersectionally, in which questions of ethnic or national identity are combined with class, gender, religion, and other identity categories. This intersectionality becomes increasingly important for archaeologists to consider with the rise of globalization, in which...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Emily Van Alst. Laura Scheiber. Mackenzie Cory. Kirsten Hawley. Cally Steussy.

This presentation highlights several aspects of archaeological research and training undertaken by the Indiana University Bighorn Archaeology field school in its thirteenth year. Areas of study include documentation of Native residential campsites (stone circles) at the Heart Mountain Nature Conservancy; research at the Heart Mountain WWII Japanese American Confinement Site; photogrammetry of stone architecture (stone circles and cairns) and rock art around the Bighorn Basin; comparative rock...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Akira Ichikawa.

This paper provides new insights to better understand the intraregional interaction, especially San Andres and Joya de Ceren in the Zapotitan Valley of El Salvador. Joya de Ceren is a village of commoners that was buried by the Loma Caldera eruption, which occurred around AD 650; it is one of the most studied ancient villages in Mesoamerica. Moreover, the previous study indicate that this village might have been closely connected to San Andres, which is the religious, political, and economic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Carlson. Michael Waters. Joshua Keene.

The Debra L. Friedkin site, located in central Texas along Buttermilk Creek, provides evidence of human occupation in Texas during the past 15 thousand years within a deposit approximately 1 meter thick. Excavation Block A consisted of 52 contiguous 1x1 m units excavated between 2006 and 2009. Excavations since the initial publication of the site include 14 units adjacent to the south end of the block and 32 units just northeast. Each 1x1 m unit was excavated in 2.5 cm levels. Currently we are...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Matthew Betts. Gabriel Hrynick.

While the technological and methodological challenges facing archaeologists seeking to address the coastal erosion issue are noteworthy, the responsibility to formulate ethical, engaged, and collaborative research methodologies is equally pressing. The impact of coastal erosion and sea level rise on archaeological sites creates significant challenges for Indigenous peoples engaged in reclaiming their own histories and rights. Archaeologists studying threatened sites must therefore also be deeply...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Adam Green. Sneh Patel. Pam Crabtree.

In this talk, we introduce the papers of the session, which reflect the many threads of Rita P. Wright’s contributions to archaeology. Prof. Wright has established a suite of concepts and critiques that generate a comparative framework that is not restricted to a single geographical area. In her early work on ceramic production and craft, Wright synthesized the anthropology of technology with the archaeology of the Indo-Iranian borderlands, laying the foundation for a technological approach that...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lisa Lucero.

In 2015 world leaders adopted the United Nations 17 Sustainable Development Goals detailed in The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Recently, policy makers, archaeologists and other tropical scholars have been working with UNESCO Mexico, focusing on sustainability in tropical regions. One of the session discussants, Dr. Nuria Sanz, Director of UNESCO Mexico, has laid out the key aspects of particular important to tropical areas, resulting in the focus on five of the 17 goals: Goal...

DOCUMENT Full-Text Michael K. Trimble.

For the last 100 years, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) has been accumulating archeological materials that require, by laws and regulations, adequate care that ensures continued preservation. USACE administers one of the largest archaeological collections in the country. However, these materials are in less than optimal condition. Overseas contingency operations have increased the number of veterans that lack the essential skills for the current job market. The Veterans Curation...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stephanie Franklin. Caitlin Ainsworth. Emily Lena Jones.

Archaeological sites are attractive places for burrowing rodents, but determining which specimens are intrusive can be a challenge. The fauna from the 2013 re-excavation of Room 28, due to its complex depositional history and rich rodent assemblage, provides an opportunity to explore different methods of identifying intrusive rodents in archaeological sites. In this paper, we use four lines of evidence to identify intrusive remains from human subsistence activity: 1) frequency of surface...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alison Harris. Deirdre Elliott. Tatiana Feuerborn. Gunilla Eriksson. Vaughan Grimes.

The 16th through 19th centuries witnessed increasing cross-cultural interactions between the Inuit of the Labrador coast and European explorers, traders, and missionaries. The effects of colonialism in this period have been studied with respect to Inuit identity, material culture, gender, and social organization, but the nature of Inuit-animal relationships has received comparatively less attention. In addition to occupying a prominent social role, the sled dog facilitated Inuit mobility and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only A. Gwynn Henderson. Linda S. Levstik. M. Jay Stottman. Janie-Rice Brother.

Investigating a Shotgun House, a Project Archaeology: Investigating Shelter case study, asks students to use multiple data sources (oral history, historical documents, architecture, and archaeology) to examine a single question: what can we learn about the lives of mid-20th century urban working-class people from the study of their homes? In this case, shotgun houses. Formal field testing in elementary school classrooms, and interviews with piloting teachers and their students documented that...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anarrubenia Capellin Ortega.

Within the Copan Valley a dearth of macrobotanical assemblages have been analyzed, and most that were focused on the area within or close to the Acropolis. As part of a larger project investigating ancient practices of sustainability within the Copan Valley, macrobotanical remains recovered through flotation from two commoner communities, Site 29 and Quebrada Piedras Negras, Group C, in the Rio Amarillo East Pocket have been analyzed. Due to acidic soil in the area both bone and other types of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lewis Messenger.

Bryson and Murray’s (1979) Climates of Hunger ignited my interest in climate change and human cultural discontinuities over time. Later, as a junior faculty in an undergraduate institution fostering collaborative research between faculty and students, I was encouraged to share my climate-related research methodology with my students. This led to development of a teaching strategy that integrates the study of climate change into the anthropology curriculum in two specific courses, one oriented...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Randee Fladeboe.

Macaws were imported into the pre-Hispanic American Southwest from central Mexico for hundreds of years; it is generally projected that the purpose of this practice was to supply feathers for ritual purposes. Recent zooarchaeological research has demonstrated that the wing feathers of Southwestern turkeys were regularly plucked, as evidenced by significant scarring on the birds’ ulnae. The author observed the presence of this scarring on the wing elements of archaeological macaw specimens from...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marjolein Admiraal. Alexandre Lucquin. Matthew von Tersch. Peter Jordan. Oliver Craig.

Stone bowls and griddle stones were in use in the Aleutian Islands for the past 9.000 years. People invested great time and effort into the manufacture and maintenance of these artefacts which insinuates their importance in prehistoric Aleutian food processing practices. A sudden increase in stone bowl occurrence around 3.500 years ago emphasizes their importance during this particular time. What was it that made these artefacts so important? We believe the answer to this question lies in their...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Matthew Douglass. Simon Holdaway. Sam Lin.

The USDA Forest Service National Grassland System consists of 20 individual native and restored prairie grasslands. While the scale of these areas allows landscape survey, this ‘sea of grass’ is a challenge for artifact and feature discovery due to vegetation cover, meaning archaeologists must use surface visibility created by erosion, deflation, and other natural and anthropogenic processes. Here we report on a collaborative student-training project between the Forest Service and the University...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kendall Baller.

Social network analyses provide insight into the strength and weakness of social connections across geographic areas. Discussions in the literature of the Mimbres region in New Mexico have stated that during the Classic period, the Mimbres ceramic tradition is confined to southwestern New Mexico, though this has not been tested with statistical assessments of data. Using ceramic style data from sites within and surrounding the Mimbres region, I investigate the levels of social ‘boundedness’ in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Richard Weinstein. Amanda Evans. Jessica Kowalski.

Archaeologists from Coastal Environments, Inc., (CEI) reassessed the National Register eligibility of the Bayou St. Malo site (16SB47) and site 16SB153, located adjacent to one another on the southeastern shore of Lake Borgne in St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana. Previous investigations at the two sites suggested that cultural remains occurred only on the marsh surface adjacent to the lake, primarily as redeposited, wave-washed materials, and that neither site was eligible for inclusion in the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Janaka Greene.

This paper presents the results of an investigation conducted at the Capshaw site, a lithic scatter site, located within the Southern High Plains region in the panhandle of Texas. The Southern High Plains region is well-known for its rich archaeological record of Paleoindian peoples, however the Cody period remains relatively poorly understood. The paper will first describe the history of the site from its discovery in 2013 through archaeological surveys with explorative field school excavations...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Delaney Cooley.

The Numic Expansion (A.D. 900 to 1300) and other explanatory models that have been used to explain the distribution of Numic speakers across the American West often fall short of providing specific methods for identifying peoples, such as Ute, in the archaeological record. This paper expands on previous investigations of this Numic Expansion narrative through the detailed reanalysis of lithics from two excavated sites: Christmas Rockshelter (5DT2) and Shavano Spring (5MN40). I compare lithic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Helen Whelton. Lisa-Marie Shillito. Ian Bull.

Coprolites contain a suite of lipid biomolecules and are an invaluable source of palaeobiological and palaeoecological information. The identification of faecal matter through the presence of highly-specific lipid biomarkers (5β-stanols and bile acids) has been used to identify and characterise faecal input from a range of different sources. Differentiation of these faecal markers is enabled through the diet, digestion and metabolism of the source animal. Lipid analysis of coprolites has also...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Daniel Plekhov.

While New England is today a mostly forested landscape, up to 80% of this region was deforested during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries for agricultural land-use. As the rural economy of New England shifted to a more urban and industrial one, much of this agricultural land was abandoned and subsequently reforested. The vestiges of this once rural landscape can now best be seen in LiDAR imagery, in which features such as stonewalls are particularly well discernible. Though the spatial and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brian Waldo. Samantha Lorenz. Toni Gonzales.

Mul Ch’en Witz (Hill with Many Caves) was first excavated in the summer of 2017 by the Contested Caves Archaeological Project (CCAP), a subproject of the Three Rivers Archaeological Project (TRAP). The area, located just below the escarpment on which the core architecture of the ancient site of La Milpa, Belize is situated, was chosen for excavation because of the high density of chultunes encountered within a restricted area. The chultunes have similar entrance styles and diameters, and five of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Blythe Morrison.

This research explores microscale patterns of human-avian interaction in the prehispanic Southwest by identifying evidence of Meleagris gallopavo (turkey) use at a series of multicomponent sites near Houck, Arizona. Using legacy field notes, maps, photos, and artifacts housed at the Museum of Northern Arizona, I provide information about the spatiotemporal contexts of turkey remains at the Houck site cluster. The area of focus was primarily occupied between AD 800-1250, before and during the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christopher Swisher. Jonathan Burns.

In 2017, the coupling of a Federally funded transportation project with an undergraduate archaeological field school, and Applied Archaeology thesis research, produced an innovative approach to archaeological mitigation. The project funded a Phase III investigation of a lithic workshop site—the James W. Hatch Site. The site was occupied during the Early Archaic Period, and attracted occupations focused on jasper reduction at a location 1.2 kilometers from a quarry. The site produced over 9,000...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erin Ray. Holley Moyes.

The ancient Maya site of Las Cuevas, in Western Belize features a cave system that runs beneath the main plaza. Investigations by the Las Cuevas Archaeological Reconnaissance project suggest that the site functioned as a Late Classic ritual pilgrimage venue and that the cave was used for large public centrally-organized performances. The cathedral-like cave entrance contains monumental architecture consisting of at least 76 plastered platforms. I hypothesize that the level of managerial...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kathryn Krasinski. Brian Wygal. Charles Holmes. Barbara Crass.

The Holzman site, discovered in 2015, is roughly one half mile from the confluence of Shaw Creek with the Tanana River in interior Alaska. To date, we have excavated 56m2, revealing repeated occupations beginning in the Bolling-Allerod, and including an occupation in the Younger Dryas. Located near the Broken Mammoth, Mead, and Swan Point late Pleistocene sites, Holzman consists of a local stone flaking station, hearths, and thousands of faunal remains including organic implements on mammoth...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Olga Gabelmann.

The High Valley in Cochabamba yields two different ceramic wares, which on first sight may demonstrate a homogeneous society. But by investigating the chaîne operatoire, the two wares each show a different set of variables on technique and practice in the production process, and, therefore, must have been produced in separate workshops. Although there is a functional aspect of each ware on the one hand, the differences can also be interpreted as expressions based on a "habitus" of technical...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Robyn Price.

While archaeological analyses that focus on the experiential and sensorial past are becoming more common, scholars continue to discuss and dispute what knowledge of the past is accessible. Without moving beyond the material remains and into the realm of the self-reflexive researcher (Hamilakis 2013: 119), this paper will demonstrate that archaeologists do not need to stray too far from their traditional methods to uncover rich evidence of past sensory lives. By drawing from the field of art...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stéphanie Leroy. Mitch Hendrickson. Emmanuelle Delque-Kolic. Enrique Vega. Philippe Dillmann.

Investigation into material production and distribution is an important way of understanding the political and socioeconomic organization of premodern states. Iron, with its specific technological characteristics and diverse cultural utility, can be perceived as one of the most dynamic materials for facilitating social and cultural transformation. Reconstructing how iron was managed in the Khmer Empire is therefore a critical perspective for documenting the interrelationship between its multiple...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Susan Johnston.

The relationship between Ireland and both Britain and continental Europe has often, both explicitly and implicitly, cast Ireland as either subsumed under the "British Isles" or as being "peripheral" to cultural life there and on the Continent. This terminology simultaneously ignores the unique aspects of Irish social and cultural life while suggesting that any study of culture there is not relevant to a broader understanding of the human experience. However, the archaeological record suggests a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kyle Urquhart.

New archaeological research at the site of Angamuco, Michoacán, Mexico demonstrates unequivocally that the P'urépecha (Tarascans) had cities that before the formation of the Late Postclassic empire. This paper will reexamine the ethnohistoric and ethnographic evidence for the organizational structure of P'urépecha urban polities in light of the new archaeological evidence. The evidence presented here suggests a form of political organization superficially similar to the altepetl model of Nahua...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Barra ODonnabhain. Jonny Geber.

Mid-19th century Irish identities divided along lines of class, religion and gender but it could be argued that all were constructed in an atmosphere of the negative characterization of the island and its inhabitants by the British elite. Race and low "moral character" were blamed for the endemic poverty of the island. The Irish poor were portrayed as a "race apart" whose inherent failings were at least partly to blame for the mortality they suffered during the Great Famine of 1845–1852. Recent...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alexander Anthony.

Excavations at the McHugh Site (47WP294), a mid-to-late Nineteenth Century homestead in Wisconsin, resulted in the recovery of a large material culture assemblage. Historical documents reveal the site’s occupants to have been pre-famine Irish emigrants who settled in Ohio before moving to Wisconsin in 1850. However, analyses of the material culture have thus far failed to uncover evidence of an Irish identity distinct from an American identity. This paper presents results of an analysis of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mitch Allen. William B. Trousdale.

Our knowledge of the cultural history of western Central Asia is spotty and incomplete between the collapse of complex societies of the Bronze Age and the middle of the first millennium BCE. This is particularly true of the little-studied Sistan region of southwest Afghanistan and eastern Iran. The Helmand Sistan Project, conducted by the Smithsonian Institution and Afghan Directorate of Archaeology and Historic Preservation through the 1970s but hitherto unpublished, uncovered through survey...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gina Palefsky. Thanik Lertcharnrit. Kelly J. Knudson.

The archaeological site of Ban Pong Manao is located in the highlands of central Thailand with mortuary contexts dating to the late Iron Age (300-400 CE). Most individuals were buried with numerous grave goods, including intentionally broken ceramics and ritually bent metal implements, and some graves included imported metal, glass, stone, and shell artifacts. The presence of non-local artifacts implies interregional interaction and may indicate some degree of social inequality, but the scale,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nicholas Zeitlin.

The environment of Iceland was rapidly and severely affected by the Norse Settlement, in particular by deforestation. In Iceland’s changing environment the production of iron, an essential material, became limited not by access to iron ore but by availability of wood to make charcoal fuel. The large-scale production of iron may be one of the primary processes that led to deforestation in Iceland due to the large need for charcoal. Investigations at Stekkjarborg on the farm of Keldudalur in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only William Engelbrecht.

Iroquoians played the hoop and pole game in Historic times, but there are no descriptions of Iroquoians playing chunkey, a variant of hoop and pole that makes use of a rolled stone disk. This has led to a widespread belief that chunkey was not played by Iroquoians. However, a symmetrical stone disk was recovered from the Eaton site, a mid-sixteenth century Erie village. Other researchers report stone disks from the following groups: Neutral (Bill Fox), Erie (Joshua Kwoka), Seneca (Martha...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Creese.

A better understanding of the role of domestic dwellings in shaping past social relations is needed. In this paper, Northern Iroquoian longhouses are studied as sociotechnical systems. This approach allows us to appreciate how social relations were generated and contested in the very activities of building and living in houses. I examine a sample of pre-Columbian longhouses from southern Ontario, Canada. Variation in aspects of house construction, spatial layout, and ritual indicates that...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Chris Caseldine.

The Hohokam within the lower Salt River Valley, central Arizona, practiced large-scale irrigation the spanned thousands of acres. Previous studies examining Hohokam irrigation assumed that there was a direct correlation between the amount of available water within the lower Salt River and the amount of land that could be irrigated. The amount of available water is necessary for assessing where water was sufficient for successful crops and where insufficient water made agricultural production...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anna Novotny.

As an anthropologist I pride myself on seeing the value of diverse worldviews. However, as a biological anthropologist I continue to struggle to communicate effectively with students whose worldview denies the authority of science and the theory of evolution. In this paper I present a case study, an ongoing negotiation between myself and a student in my introductory class who insists on a formal in-class debate between evolution and creationism. That many scientists do not find religious beliefs...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Billie Follensbee.

Recent research has re-identified certain enigmatic Gulf Coast Olmec greenstone artifacts as elite versions of textile-making tools. These artifacts, which include Middle Formative picks, figural celts, clamshell and plaque pendants, and objects designated as "spoons," were likely used by elites as both functional objects and high-status adornment, as illustrated in the contemporary sculpture. Most examples of these artifacts are found in caches and graves of distant and/or later civilizations,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Robert Rosenswig.

The difficulty that many economists and anthropologists have with studying ancient money lies with inadequate understanding of modern monetary systems. I briefly review the establishment of two currencies: the British pound in the 18th century and the US dollar in the 19th and why the establishment both currencies were political (not economic) constructs. Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) economists analyze the current fiat currencies as political constructs and David Graber’s Debt: The First 5000...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marcia Bezerra.

This presentation aims to discuss Public Archaeology (PA) from a Brazilian approach. Based on a study that includes a bibliographical survey, and the analysis of the papers presented at scientific meetings in Brazil, I examined: a) the role of PA in the contemporary agenda of the archaeology in Brazil; b) the connections between PA, Heritage Education (HE), and the development projects, and c) its relationship with the decolonizing perspective of the discipline in Latin America. In addition, I...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Pool.

Obsidian Hydration and conventional radiocarbon dates at the HO-Bar Site range from 900 B.C. to A.D. 750, partially overlapping dates from nearby Mogollon Village. Perhaps more importantly, these dates are comparable to the Early Agricultural and Early Pithouse Period sites from Southwestern New Mexico. An Early Agricultural occupation has not been established in the Upland Mogollon area in the middle Mimbres River and San Francisco Rivers. The HO-Bar Site dates suggest that there is a Early...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Danielle Soza.

From 2011-2016 Dr. E. Charles Adams and Richard Lange have organized and directed the Rock Art Ranch field school, a National Science Foundation Research Experience for Undergraduates (NSF-REU) Program from 2013-2016. Rock Art Ranch, located just southeast of Winslow, Arizona contains evidence of use/occupation from Paleoindian to Pueblo periods, and yielded a wealth of data that has inspired dissertations, masters theses, senior theses, and student projects. As a participant of the NSF-REU at...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mary Bryant.

For more than 100 years, palynologists have relied on the traditional method of pollen analysis to provide essential information on paleodiets, paleoenvironments, archaeology, and other research such as forensics. The past traditional method has focused on the of light and scanning electron microscopy and then used those results to obtain information and values which palynologists can use to interpret those. During the past decade, some scientists have turned to using other techniques such as...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Veronica Arias.

The discovery of a nearly complete, articulated Bison occidentalis in association with a Calf Creek projectile point in the northern Texas Panhandle in 2002 constitutes one of the few known Middle Archaic archaeological sites in the region. As the remains were found incidental to the construction of a new municipal swimming pool, documentation of the excavation and any subsequent analysis were less than ideal. A recently obtained AMS radiocarbon date of the remains at 5115 RCYBP falls within the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Donna Ruhl.

A pilot study was conducted to test the feasibility of applying strontium isotope analysis to source the origins of archaeological "canoe trees" tested to make pre-contact dugout canoes spanning some 5000 years. Many canoes collected decades ago from Florida’s lakes produced unexpected signatures. These results raised further questions about the methods' feasibility and the impact of past preservation approaches to the curation of waterlogged wooden artifacts. The anatomical nature of wood...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tamsin O'Connell.

Isotopic analysis as a method of assessing diet or geographical origin is now ubiquitous in archaeology, to the point where seemingly no project is complete without it. The relative ease of sample preparation and increasing prevalence of isotope mass specs has contributed to its rapid growth. Yet despite its ease of execution, it is not a cut-and-dried technique, and data interpretation can be complex. The greater use by specialists and non-specialists has resulted in studies that range from...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrew Krug. Kyle Waller. Christine VanPool.

Excavations have uncovered millions of marine shells throughout the Southwest. However, it was not an easily obtainable resource. The nearest possible location was the expansive shorelines of Sonora, Mexico. Archaeological literature is full of hypotheses regarding shell procurement and exchange—models of down-the-line trading, least cost, prestige, and group membership. Each of these hypotheses agrees that where and whom the people of the Southwest interacted with to acquire marine shell are...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Uri Berger. Gonen Sharon.

Excavation in the Shamir Dolmen Field (comprising over 400 dolmens), on the northern Israeli basaltic terrains, was carried out following the discovery of enigmatic rock art engravings on the ceiling of one of the largest dolmens ever recorded in the Levant. Excavation of this dolmen, covered by a basalt capstone weighing some 50 tons, revealed a secondary multi-burial (of both adults and children) rarely described in a dolmen context in Israel. Engraved into the rock ceiling above the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Richard Paine. Richard Hansen. Carlos Morales-Aguilar. Kevin Johnston.

El Mirador, in the northern Peten, has redefined our ideas about the Maya Preclassic. Its massive architecture and its complex system of sacbes compare to the largest Classic period centers. Unlike many of its smaller Preclassic neighbors, El Mirador collapsed at the dawn of the Classic. Understanding El Mirador’s organization, economy, and relationship to its environment requires detailed knowledge of the site’s population trajectory. Reconstructing El Mirador’s population trajectory, we face a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Carrie Dennett.

Ethnohistoric and colonial documents typically focus on detailing a socioeconomic and political landscape dominated by Chorotega and Nicarao groups for contact-period Pacific Nicaragua. Yet these texts simultaneously indicate that other groups living in isolated communities or urban barrios were also commonplace and included Maribios, Mazatec, Chondal, Matagalpans, Sumo-Ulwa, and possibly Lenca and/or Maya-speaking peoples, among others. As archaeologists, we are aware—many of us dutifully...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michelle Pigott.

Archaeologists have always made use of ever-abundant ceramic materials as markers for cultural and ethnic identity of past peoples. This works distinctly on the assumption that these identities and their linked ceramic traditions are stable and unchanging; ceramics that do not fit into the expected pattern are often explained away as trade items or the arrival of new ethnic groups. This paper instead argues that ceramics reflect the sequence of ceramic manufacture generated by individual potters...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kathleen Huggins.

This presentation introduces a technique for quantitative analysis of ceramic surface topography, using false-color images generated through reflectance transformation imaging and automated quantitative analysis using cell-counting software. A preliminary study of surface topography variation in Early Formative and Middle Formative ceramics from Chiripa, Bolivia, will be presented, along with an outline of a reference database, Ceramic-Surface Topography of the Andes. The purpose of this study...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Yoko Nishimura.

There are thousands of Japanese archaeological artifacts stored in the major arts and archaeology museums of the United States. Many of the collections came to this country during the late 19th and the first half of the 20th centuries. In those days, archaeological objects left their home countries more readily than today and reached at the foreign museums through expeditions, inter-institutional exchanges, purchases from private art galleries, and gifts from wealthy art collectors....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stanley Berryman.

As one of the fortunate students who was at San Diego State University in 1975, I was present for the announcement that Dr. Joe Ball had been hired as a professor of Anthropology in the Department of Anthropology. As a contemporary of Joe, I had the opportunity to see his early contributions to the growth of the Department in the 1970's and his willingness to give his time and energy to help his students be successful regardless of their focus in archaeology. It did not matter if the student's...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joe Alessi.

John White once published a piece comparing the depiction of both Native Americans and Blacks in the cartoons of Playboy Magazine from its inception to 1970. In this work, John discovered that as a result of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960's the image of Blacks in cartoons changed from ones oriented on cultural and racial distinctions to ones that merely displayed blacks in the cartoon. In short, the humor of the cartoon was no longer fixated on Black race or culture, but on other...

DOCUMENT Citation Only James Brady.

At the 1985 Maya Ceramic Workshop, Arthur Demarest noted the intense interest in the Protoclassic. Indeed, ceramists with only a mammiform support and a handful of sherds would pause to speculate on the significance of a statistically insignificant number of sherds. During the 1990s, Joseph Ball and I doggedly worked to reexamine every aspect of the Protoclassic issue. Aided by contributions of a number of colleagues, the resulting document attempted to strip the Protoclassic of association...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Flavia Morello Repetto. Marta Alfonso-Durruty. Tom Amorosi. Victor Sierpe. Manuel J. San Román.

Between 1933 and 1980 Junius Bird, researcher from the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) New York, traveled through southern Chile where he carried a wide array of archaeological excavations and studies. Towards the beginning of this period, Bird conducted extensive excavations in three sites in the Southern most region of Fuego-Patagonia. Collections from these sites are currently housed at the Division of Anthropology AMNH, and were recently analyzed as part of the activities of Grant...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Donald Slater. Ryan Collins.

During 2011 excavations deep beneath the petroglyph panels in Aktun Kuruxtun, Mexico, members of the Central Yucatan Archaeological Cave Project (CYAC) uncovered a small tunnel leading into a previously unknown chamber of the cavern. The discovery came in the final days of the field season, however, and the chamber was too choked with flood sediments to be methodologically investigated. As a result, the passage was reburied. Last summer, CYAC returned to the cave and successfully explored the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tim Hovezak. Gary Ethridge. Gay Ives.

Site preservation has been an essential function at Mesa Verde National Park for a full century as well as a major prerogative of the National Park Service since its very inception. Early archaeological investigations at the park and attendant preservation efforts were instrumental in the definition of Ancestral Pueblo culture history by players who themselves were instrumental in the development of the science of North American archaeology. This presentation chronicles some of the remarkable...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Phil Geib.

More than 50 years ago archaeologists identified a high-density of Puebloan habitations on the Kaiparowits Plateau in southern Utah. Analysis of pottery from these habitations by James Gunnerson and Florence Lister resulted in conflicting interpretations of cultural affiliation. Gunnerson argued for a Virgin affiliation whereas Lister argued for a Kayentan affiliation. Lister’s interpretation triumphed and the Puebloan occupation of the Kaiparowits was attributed to migration from the south...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tiffany Cain.

In this paper, I explore the ways in which albarradas, or the dry-laid enclosure walls ubiquitous to Yucatec Maya towns, can be manipulated to become defensive structures under the threat of attack. I discuss the results of a recent study that conducted a construction analysis on a series of wall features in the now unpopulated town of Tela – an auxiliary to and key commercial throughway for the burgeoning frontier hub of Tihosuco (since repopulated) during the 19th century. This town was...