New and Ongoing Research on the North American Plains and Rocky Mountains

DOCUMENT Citation Only Bonnie Pitblado.

This is an abstract from the "New and Ongoing Research on the North American Plains and Rocky Mountains" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. From 1999 to 2013, members of the Rocky Mountain Paleoindian Research Program (RMPRP) conducted extensive survey and numerous test excavations of very ancient sites in the Gunnison Basin, southwestern Colorado. During that period, researchers learned much about the timing of initial human use of the Basin and how...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Delaney Cooley.

This is an abstract from the "New and Ongoing Research on the North American Plains and Rocky Mountains" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent interest in early Athapaskan population movements has led to the reconsideration of Dismal River sites on the Central Plains during the mid-16th to 18th centuries. Although most archaeologists recognize Dismal River people as ancestral Apache, an unclear archaeological record and outdated evidence has led...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Steven Keehner.

This is an abstract from the "New and Ongoing Research on the North American Plains and Rocky Mountains" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper presents a problematic ceramic taxonomy for the Late Woodland period (AD 500–1000) in the Central plains. The focus is on two archaeological taxonomic designation units: the Sterns Creek phase and the Grasshopper Falls phase. Through the lens of literature review, archival site records, and analysis of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mary Adair.

This is an abstract from the "New and Ongoing Research on the North American Plains and Rocky Mountains" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Maize, or corn, was one of the dominate crops to many North American Plains tribes, contributing beyond subsistence to origin beliefs, rituals, ceremonies, and trade. Given this, archaeologists seek to recreate the evolutionary processes by which maize became an important element in the economy of Plains...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rachael Shimek.

This is an abstract from the "New and Ongoing Research on the North American Plains and Rocky Mountains" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Despite ethnographic and ethnohistoric evidence suggesting the Great Plains were teeming with canids during prehistory and the contact period, the archaeological record of canids (wolves, coyotes, dogs, and foxes) in Wyoming seems rather sparse. This presentation briefly describes the nature of the canid record in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Katherine Burnett.

This is an abstract from the "New and Ongoing Research on the North American Plains and Rocky Mountains" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Stagecoaches have been key players in the imagination that is the "Wild West" since the late 19th century. They live on today as one of the main symbols of the mythic American West, perhaps most easily recognized in the form of the Wells Fargo stagecoach that appears in parades across the country. Typically...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rachel Reckin. Lawrence C. Todd.

This is an abstract from the "New and Ongoing Research on the North American Plains and Rocky Mountains" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In recent years, our understanding of high elevation landscapes’ potential contribution to prehistoric foragers’ seasonal rounds has developed significantly. This paper advances that understanding further by offering a method for estimating relative occupational duration through time for high elevation landscapes....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Faith Wilfong. Matthew E. Hill.

This is an abstract from the "New and Ongoing Research on the North American Plains and Rocky Mountains" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Dismal River Aspect sites, located within Lake Scott State Park in western Kansas, represent long-term settlement of the area during the AD 1500s-1700s by a mixture of Puebloan migrants and local Apache groups. This study uses faunal material from the protohistoric period to begin to understand the nature and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jack Hofman. Lawrence Todd.

This is an abstract from the "New and Ongoing Research on the North American Plains and Rocky Mountains" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. More than 15 years of systematic surveys in the Washakie Wilderness area by the GRSLE archaeology project in the Shoshone National Forest, northwest Wyoming, has yielded a sample of over 30 Paleoindian projectile points at a mean elevation of 2885m. These specimens provide clues about early prehistoric activity at...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cody Newton. Spencer Pelton.

This is an abstract from the "New and Ongoing Research on the North American Plains and Rocky Mountains" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Sisters Hill Paleoindian site is located between the Bighorn Mountains and the High Plains of the Powder River Basin in northern Wyoming, two regions with largely distinct ecologies and chipped stone raw material sources. Accordingly, the site is an ideal place to research the causes of settlement system...

DOCUMENT Citation Only William Reitze. Maria Nieves Zedeño.

This is an abstract from the "New and Ongoing Research on the North American Plains and Rocky Mountains" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The weakest link in reconstructing patterns of organizational complexity among Late Prehistoric Blackfoot ancestors known archaeologically as the Old Women’s Phase (1000-250 BP) is the dearth of population estimates that would explain the need to adopt institutions of social control such as esoteric societies and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Amanda Burtt. Larisa R.G. DeSantis.

This is an abstract from the "New and Ongoing Research on the North American Plains and Rocky Mountains" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Assumptions of prehistoric domestic dogs as scavengers has been pervasive in archaeology and beyond. This project clarifies these assumption by investigating the dietary behavior of prehistoric domestic dogs via dental microwear data or features on the tooth surface that indicate types of food consumed. In order...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kirsten Hawley. Laura Scheiber. Amanda Burtt.

This is an abstract from the "New and Ongoing Research on the North American Plains and Rocky Mountains" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Interpreting past uses of mountainous regions of the American West is hampered by difficult access, excessive ground vegetation, and wilderness restrictions. Recently however researchers working in the Greater Yellowstone Area have recorded hundreds of sites exposed by forest fires, and our knowledge of campsite...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brandi Bethke.

This is an abstract from the "New and Ongoing Research on the North American Plains and Rocky Mountains" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper presents an analysis of the faunal assemblage recovered from excavations at the Cut Bank Creek Boarding School Site (24GL0302), located on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation in Glacier County, MT. Excavations at the site took place following the inadvertent discovery of a large bone bed initially unearth...