Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Whittaker. Kathryn Kamp. Chuck LaRue. William Bryce.

This is an abstract from the "The Global “Impact” of Projectile Technologies: Updating Methods and Regional Overviews of the Invention and Transmission of the Spear-Thrower and the Bow and Arrow" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Atlatl-related motifs are prominent in a limited area of the prehistoric American Southwest. The motifs include atlatls and darts and images relating to hunting and violence, all socially and symbolically important. While...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Craig Stevens.

This is an abstract from the "Archaeological Futures through a Virtual Past" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Technologies inspire the creation of new subjectivities - changing our points of perspective and augmenting the ways in which we perceive. Through our ever-expanding applications of innovation, humans recontextualize realities. We use the tools of the present to formulate our visions of the future and our understandings of the past. Along...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sharisse McCafferty. Geoffrey McCafferty.

This is an abstract from the "Centralizing Central America: New Evidence, Fresh Perspectives, and Working on New Paradigms" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Throughout human history people have been entranced by avians. Their ability to fly from earth to the sky, while displaying grace and beauty, as well as exhibiting a ferocity to protect their nests and hatchlings was revered. Birds were often seen as messengers between the sky and earth,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Mathiowetz.

This is an abstract from the "Bringing the Past to Life, Part 1: Papers in Honor of John M. D. Pohl" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the long-running debate on the nature of interaction between societies in prehispanic Mesoamerica and the US Southwest/Northwest Mexico, the acquisition of scarlet macaws and their dissemination to the SW/NW has been perplexing. Questions abound as to how and why long-distance social networks were established and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dru McGill. Katherine Chiou. Daulton Selke.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this poster, the authors introduce a project funded by the National Science Foundation to advance knowledge on the pervasiveness and effectiveness of ethics and responsible conduct of research training interventions in archaeology and other science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields. Specifically, the project will examine the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Wendi Murray. Julie Unruh.

This is an abstract from the "Ideas, Ethical Ideals, and Museum Practice in North American Archaeological Collections" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Walk through any archaeological collection and you walk through a historical archive of collections storage practices. Best practices for collections storage evolve as materials science evolves, and storage decisions are realigned to maximize research potential. However, determining appropriate...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Amy Hirshman. Matthew Valenti.

This is an abstract from the "Ceramics and Archaeological Sciences 2024" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. We examine the traces of production gestures that ceramics producers left behind on the surface of 100 sherds excavated at Urichu, a minor administrative center for the Tarascan (P’urépecha) state (1350–1524 CE), in the Lake Pátzcuaro Basin, Michoacán, México. These sherds represent the Early and Late Postclassic time periods at the site,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Adam King. Terry Powis. Sheldon Skaggs. Christina Luke. Nilesh Gaikwad.

This is an abstract from the "Adventures in Beekeeping: Recent Studies in Ecology, Archaeology, History, and Ethnography in Yucatán" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this paper we discuss our recent absorbed residue study of a marble Ulúa style vase found at the Pacbitun site in Belize. In that study, we detected evidence for the consumption of the ritual drink balché dating to Terminal Classic period (800–850 CE). Consumption of balché is...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael L. Loughlin. Christopher Pool.

This is an abstract from the "Los Rituales del Juego de Pelota en la Costa del Golfo / Ballgame Rituals in the Gulf Lowlands" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Although ballgame paraphernalia and figurines depicting ballgame players have been reported from Tres Zapotes and other nearby sites since the 1930s, the identification of ballcourts in the Eastern Lower Papaloapan Basin (ELPB) has been elusive. At Tres Zapotes, the areas between mounds and in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cherra Wyllie.

This is an abstract from the "Los Rituales del Juego de Pelota en la Costa del Golfo / Ballgame Rituals in the Gulf Lowlands" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In south-central Veracruz, representations of ballplayers, captives, kings, and queens defy clear categorizations, made more complex by costume and gender designations, hierarchical proportion, natural sexual dimorphism, and symbolic roles versus historic portraiture; distinctions that may be...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Akshay Sarathi.

This is an abstract from the "Islands around Africa: State-of-the-Art and Future Directions" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Studies of urbanism in East Africa have tended to focus on the medieval “stone towns” that dot the coast. However, studying these more traditional expressions of urbanism produces an incomplete picture of the settlement patterns of precolonial East Africa. In islands such as Zanzibar, settlement patterns are unique due to the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Curt Carbonell. Marie Hopwood. Laura Carbonell.

This is an abstract from the "Experimental Pedagogies: Teaching through Experimental Archaeology Part II" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Bappir (Sumerian: "beer bread") was a ubiquitous ingredient in ancient Mesopotamian beer brewing for millennia. However, little is known about exactly what bappir was or how it was used. Nevertheless, the scant evidence available from contemporary texts, such as the second-millennium BCE "Hymn to Ninkasi," have...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elizabeth Clay.

This is an abstract from the "Storeroom Taphonomies: Site Formation in the Archaeological Archive" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Galways Plantation collection, consisting of 28 boxes of artifacts excavated on Montserrat during the 1980s, was temporarily on loan in the United States when the Soufrière Hills Volcano erupted in July 1995. This catastrophic event led to the creation of an exclusion zone covering two-thirds of the island that...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Heather Law Pezzarossi.

This is an abstract from the "Thinking with, through, and against Archaeology’s Politics of Knowledge" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. How can we learn from an object? How is that different from learning about an object? In a class project, I asked students to undo institutionalized silences and challenge dominant narratives with museum objects that appear to be mute. We studied three O'Odham baskets housed at the Syracuse University Art Museum...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Patrick Druggan.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The emergence and decline of Cahokia, the largest Indigenous settlement north of Mexico, have long captivated archaeologists. Population reconstructions are a major line of evidence for unraveling the story of Cahokia. Current models hinge upon reconstructions derived from architectural data which estimate population by tracking the quantity of observed...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Charles Andrews.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Paleodemographic reconstruction is an essential prerequisite for understanding human ecology of ancient societies. In the US Southwest several studies have employed Bayesian statistical methods to improve population estimates. This paper compares two alternative implementations of Bayesian statistics to demographic reconstruction in the US Southwest –...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mallory Melton.

This is an abstract from the "Beyond Maize and Cacao: Reflections on Visual and Textual Representation and Archaeological Evidence of Other Plants in Precolumbian Mesoamerica" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Rulership in Mesoamerican societies was inextricably tied to generative aspects of agriculture. Becoming a focal point for the maintenance of cosmological order provided a pathway for asserting control of aspects of the natural world, like...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Soderberg.

This is an abstract from the "New Work in Medieval Archaeology, Part 1: Landscapes, Food, and Health" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The twelfth-century Anglo-Norman conquest of Ireland triggered a complex swirl of changes that presage dynamics of European colonialism in modern times. One key pattern is the emergence of divides between Anglo-Norman (colonizer) and Gaelic (indigenous) identities. Negotiating differences between “being Anglo-Norman”...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Madeline Blanchard.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In 1998, ornithologist John P. O'Neill donated a vast ethnographic collection of objects he was gifted from fellow researcher Charles Fugler or purchased from local persons in Pucallpa, Peru, during his time studying birds in the Peruvian Amazon. According to O'Neill, the cultures responsible for these items' creations are the Cashinahua, Aguaruna, Achual,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sean Field. Donna Glowacki. Kay Barnett.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. More than a century ago, Jesse W. Fewkes excavated Far View House, a large mesa top pueblo in Mesa Verde National Park. Despite a long history of research, interpretation, stabilization, and maintenance since its initial excavation in 1916, a complete construction history of Far View House has never been produced. New research at Far View, including...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Angélica Márquez-Osuna.

This is an abstract from the "Adventures in Beekeeping: Recent Studies in Ecology, Archaeology, History, and Ethnography in Yucatán" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper examines the role of the stingless bee Melipona beecheii in nineteenth-century Yucatán and shows how the rise of the hacienda system played a contingent role in reshaping beekeeping practices and human-bee relationships. Using primary sources such as beekeeping manuals and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gabrielle Vail. Maia Dedrick.

This is an abstract from the "Adventures in Beekeeping: Recent Studies in Ecology, Archaeology, History, and Ethnography in Yucatán" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In her article “Saving the Other Bees,” Eve Bratman (2020) explores the successful reintroduction of beekeeping practices associated with the stingless species Melipona beecheii in the Yucatán Peninsula, which has resulted in the species thriving following near extinction. She...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marcello Canuto. Tomás Barrientos. Francisco Saravia. Alejandra Gonzalez. Jocelyne Ponce.

This is an abstract from the "The Rise and Apogee of the Classic Maya Kaanu’l Hegemonic State at Dzibanche" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. By examining archaeological and epigraphic evidence from the northwestern Peten during the Classic period, we can gain valuable insights into the strategies used by the Kaanul dynasts to establish and maintain a unique regional hegemony in the Maya Lowlands. We focus on the site of La Corona where we have...

DOCUMENT Citation Only George Lau. Milton Luján.

This is an abstract from the "After the Feline Cult: Social Dynamics and Cultural Reinvention after Chavín" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent field investigations at the hilltop site of Pashash clarify key diachronic changes during the rise of segmentary lordships in the Pallasca highlands of northern Ancash, Peru. Ceramic, radiocarbon, architectural, and ancillary contextual evidence help to reveal local cultural patterns tracking the Pashash...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gabriel Silva Collins.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The contemporary southeastern Peruvian towns of Chinchero and Urquillos sit atop Inka population centers and are connected by the Urquillos Valley. Now occupied by family farms and walking routes, this steep valley also hosts former Inka roads and several understudied archaeological sites that survive in various stages of integration with small...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Robert Rosenswig. Keith Prufer.

This is an abstract from the "“The Center and the Edge”: How the Archaeology of Belize Is Foundational for Understanding the Ancient Maya, Part II" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The 10,000 years before ceramics first appear is the longest epoch in the human occupation of Belize, and yet the least understood. Many fundamental cultural developments are first documented in what is now known as the Maya region, including management of tropical forest...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nicholas Dunning. Armando Anaya Hernández. Jeffrey Brewer. Christopher Carr. Nicolaus Seefeld.

This is an abstract from the "New and Emerging Perspectives on the Bajo el Laberinto Region of the Maya Lowlands, Part 1" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Elevated Interior Region of the Maya Lowlands, including the area surrounding the sprawling Bajo el Laberinto, faced acute water availability issues that necessitated the annual capture and storage of rain water to support urbanization. Two large urban areas dominate ancient Maya settlement...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Hollis Miller.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The historian Tiya Miles argues for an abundant approach to history, in which researchers learn to excavate absences in the historical record instead of allowing those silences to stand. Belongings (a.k.a. artifacts or objects) are additional archives that contain the stories, energies, and contexts in which they were made and used. As part of my work with...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Robin Rönnlund.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The urbanization of human settlements is commonly seen as a relatively linear development beginning in the earliest sedentary communities of the Neolithic and ending with the international megalopolises of the present day. A closer scrutiny of the archaeological record, however, clearly shows that this narrative has little bearing on the factual situation....

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Schweikart.

This is an abstract from the "Vicksburg Is the Key: Recent Archaeological Investigations and New Perspectives from the Gibraltar of the South" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Vicksburg National Cemetery, established in 1866, and Vicksburg National Military Park, established in 1899, were created to commemorate the 1862–1863 siege, to honor those who had fought and died here and to preserve these significant places on the very grounds on which...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Roxanne Mayoral. Teegan Boyd. Michele Bleuze. James Brady.

This is an abstract from the "Multidisciplinary Approaches to the Subterranean" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Cueva de Sangre is a 3.5-kilometer cave that is a highly complex, multi-cave system, in Dos Pilas, Petén, Guatemala, that includes riverine environments, seasonally inundated passages as well as dry areas. Use of the cave has been dated ceramically from the Late Preclassic to the Terminal Classic (400 BC – AD 800). This study examines the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Matthew Kroot. Matt Peeples. Jessie Kortscheff.

This is an abstract from the "Training a New Generation of Heritage Professionals in the Valley of the Sun: The ASU Field School at S’eḏav Va’aki" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In 2021 the City of Phoenix’s Archaeology Office invited Arizona State University instructors and students to assist in the development of a management plan for a parcel of land within the S’eḏav Va’aki Museum and Archaeological Park lands via a field training program in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Witelson.

This is an abstract from the "Painting the Past: Interpretive Approaches in Global Rock Art Research" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Rock paintings of cattle raids are common in South Africa's southeastern mountains. Traditionally, such scenes are thought to illustrate some degree of conflict between two groups. The postures of the cattle depicted in the same scenes have been interpreted as showing movement such as walking or being driven from one...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nicholas Passalacqua. Kaleigh Best. Rebecca George. Katie Zejdlik.

This is an abstract from the "Human Remains in the Marketplace and Beyond: Myths and Realities of Monitoring, Grappling With, and Anthropologizing the Illicit Trade in a Post-Harvard World" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In recent years there have been a number of high-profile cases where human remains were “discovered” resulting in media attention due to the unethical conditions in which the remains were encountered. Unfortunately, the discovery...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jody Gordon.

This is an abstract from the "World-Systems and Globalization in Archaeology: Assessing Models of Intersocietal Connections 50 Years since Wallerstein’s “The Modern World-System”" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In 2007, a children’s book about Cypriot history entitled “The Island that Everyone Wanted” was published. Despite being aimed at a juvenile audience, this title aptly encapsulates the history of Cyprus, i.e., as an island coveted by...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ilean Isaza. Diana Carvajal Contreras.

This is an abstract from the "Unraveling the Mysteries of the Isthmo-Colombian Area’s Past: A Symposium in Honor of Archaeologist Richard Cooke and His Contributions" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A recent focus on insular areas has expanded our knowledge on the abundance and diversity of insular, coastal, and pelagic habitats harvested from ca. 6200 BP. Inspired by Richard Cooke’s vision to explore the Coiba Archipelago, in 2023 the authors...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Manuel Calongos Curotto.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Cañete Valley was of great economic importance to the Inca Empire. The presence of sites like Huacones/Vilcahuasi in the lower section of the valley or Incahuasi in the middle section, both of them having various sets of storage facilities, shows the significance of the intensive agricultural production of the valley. However, we still do not...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sheila Bonde. Clark Maines.

This is an abstract from the "New Work in Medieval Archaeology, Part 2: Crossing Boundaries, Materialities, and Identities" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Our paper will survey in critical fashion the last 20 years of medieval monastic archaeology in France. During that time, the new research directions of the late 1990s have confronted a changed landscape for archaeological work. The creation of INRAP has meant that fewer university-sponsored...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Osman Karrar. Jonathan Haws. Alvise Barbieri. Milena Carvalho. Nuno Bicho.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Nile valley, its associated drainage system, and the adjacent Sahara are thought to have been part of the Anatomically Modern Humans (AMH) dispersal routes out of Africa during the Middle and Late Pleistocene. Building on the pioneering prehistoric work of Marks and colleagues in the early 1960s in northern Sudan, we present the results of the 2019 and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Kelly.

This is an abstract from the "Power to the People: Cultural Resource Investigations along Utility Lines Giving a Voice to Past and Present Communities" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. PAL’s archaeological investigations along a natural gas pipeline right-of-way in southwestern Connecticut identified a cluster of precontact Native American sites in Newtown situated along Rodericks Brook, a tributary stream to the Housatonic River. The sites include...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jodi Jacobson. James Ramsey.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Animal bone was utilized for more than subsistence purposes. Most non-subsistence use has been focused on utilitarian tools. Bone-use beyond subsistence and utilitarian tool use is rarely identified or considered for its cultural impact or implications. Often it is difficult to identify in the archaeological record, and is frequently overlooked, with its...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sabina Cvecek.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. While kinship studies based on ancient DNA (aDNA) data have been instrumental in reconstructing biological relationships in European prehistory, they often overlook the complex web of social interactions that shaped prehistoric communities. This interdisciplinary investigation delves into the rich tapestry of social dynamics that characterized European...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Daniel Hansen.

This is an abstract from the "Reinvent, Reclaim, Redefine: Considerations of "Reuse" in Archaeological Contexts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent archaeological work on the people known as the Picts of northern Britain (ca. 300–900 CE) has revealed that many of the Picts’ characteristic monuments and structures made use of materials previously made significant in prehistory. A portion of the Pictish “symbol stones”— a class of stone monuments...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Laura Solar-Valverde.

This is an abstract from the "What Happened after the Fall of Teotihuacan?" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Toward the end of the sixth century AD, a great fire destroyed the ceremonial center of Teotihuacan, capital of the largest urban development in Mesoamerica. This event was the culmination of a long process of disintegration of Teotihuacan’s macroregional system, a process that began during the ancient city’s apogee. This presentation will...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sonya Sobel. John Blong. Rachel Horowitz.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Cascade Phase, spanning roughly 9000-5000 years BP, is defined by distinctive lithic technology and edge-ground cobbles. Archaeological data suggests mobile foragers temporarily camped in resource-rich areas during this period. Despite its recognition as a unique cultural period, our understanding of Cascade Phase lifeways, particularly resource use...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Byron Smith. Timothy Beach. Sheryl Luzzadder-Beach.

This is an abstract from the "The Archaeology of Wetlands" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Growing scholarship since the 1980s has focused on ancient Maya–wetland interactions after raised field agriculture was revealed in northern Belize. From this, mounting evidence indicates extensive reliance on seasonal and perennial wetlands for ancient Maya farming, aquaculture, and water retention across the region. These systems would have served as major...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Justin Reamer.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Discussions of Indigenous agricultural systems in the Northeastern United States have focused almost exclusively on the cultivation of maize, beans, and squash. General models focus on the cultivation of these plants in ridged fields or fields of small hillocks. While the fields and crops grown within them are important, I argue they are only one part of a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Fernando Flores Esquivel.

This is an abstract from the "New and Emerging Perspectives on the Bajo el Laberinto Region of the Maya Lowlands, Part 2" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The ancient city of Calakmul was the locus of important human developments throughout a period of no less than fifteen centuries, during which various social groups, ruling houses and urban palimpsests followed one another, and sometimes coexisted, until its definitive abandonment. Nowadays, lidar...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Carl Knappett.

This is an abstract from the "States, Confederacies, and Nations: Reenvisioning Early Large-Scale Collectives." session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In scholarship on the Bronze Age Aegean, there is a robust conjunction of palace, town, and state. If we take the case of Knossos, then the presumed central authority represented by its palatial complex, and its surrounding town covering 100 ha, are generally thought to imply an associated territory under...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Charlotte Vendome-Gardner.

This is an abstract from the "Interdisciplinary Approaches to Rock Art Documentation, Research, and Analysis" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Fluteplayer is widely recognized within rock art, characterized by a figure holding and/or playing a flute. It has been misinterpreted as the Kachina Kokopelli. As a result it is now entangled with modern, predominantly Western, interpretations of the Kokopelli character, which are subsequently rooted in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jonathan Dombrosky. Susan Ryan. Steve Copeland. R. David Satterwhite.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Haynie site (5MT1905) is an ancestral Pueblo village that was intermittently occupied from approximately AD 700 to 1280. The formation of this village is extremely complex, as it includes multiple occupations and significant modern disturbance. The Crow Canyon Archaeological Center has conducted research at Haynie since 2017, focusing on reconstructing...

DOCUMENT Citation Only D. Shane Miller. Ashley Smallwood. Phillip Carr. I. Randolph Daniel. Jesse Tune.

This is an abstract from the "*SE Big Data and Bigger Questions: Papers in Honor of David G. Anderson" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The early record of the American Southeast is best characterized as consisting of relatively few stratified, dated sites, yet an abundant surface record. In this paper, we discuss the pioneering work of David Anderson, who has spent a career cobbling together large datasets from academia, cultural resource...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Edward Henry. Casey Barrier. Robin Beck. Timothy Horsley.

This is an abstract from the "*SE Big Data and Bigger Questions: Papers in Honor of David G. Anderson" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Situated in present-day Collinsville, Illinois, Cahokia Mounds is considered globally as the premier example of precontact American Indian urbanism in North America. However, understandings of Cahokia’s early population density, spatial arrangement, and scale are primarily drawn from relatively small areas within...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Robin Beck. David Moore. Christopher Rodning. Rachel Briggs.

This is an abstract from the "*SE Big Data and Bigger Questions: Papers in Honor of David G. Anderson" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. From December 1566 to March 1568, Captain Juan Pardo established a network of six small garrisons extending beyond the Atlantic Coast through modern-day North and South Carolina and across the Appalachian Mountains into eastern Tennessee. The first of these, Fort San Juan, was built in the Appalachian Foothills at a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only LuAnn Wandsnider.

This is an abstract from the "Big Ideas to Match Our Future: Big Data and Macroarchaeology" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The archaeological record captures the material fallout of social processes operating at multiple temporal and spatial scales. Here I explore generational and supra-generational social processes of colonizers inhabiting a foreign and dynamic landscape under complex social conditions. Patent and census records allow for a big...

DOCUMENT Citation Only J. Christopher Gillam.

This is an abstract from the "*SE Big Data and Bigger Questions: Papers in Honor of David G. Anderson" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the mid-1990s, David Anderson was already an accomplished National Park Service (NPS) archaeologist and scholar in the US Southeast and beyond. I was a fresh out of Arkansas MA with a Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) data tape from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) and some big ideas on the peopling of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cindy Hsin-yee Huang.

This is an abstract from the "Big Ideas to Match Our Future: Big Data and Macroarchaeology" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The appearance of microliths and their rapid spread throughout Eurasia is one of the major developments in the evolution of Paleolithic technologies, since microliths and microblades, as part of complex modular tool packages, became the dominant technology in the Pleistocene (around 25,000 years ago) and persisted into the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jeffrey Brewer. Nicholas Dunning. Shane Montgomery. Nicolaus Seefeld. Christopher Carr.

This is an abstract from the "New and Emerging Perspectives on the Bajo el Laberinto Region of the Maya Lowlands, Part 1" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Calakmul is known to be one of the largest ancient Maya urban centers in the Elevated Interior Region of the Maya Lowlands. Thus, it is not surprising that in this water-challenged environment, the population of Calakmul invested in some of the region’s grandest reservoirs. While limited...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Leigh Hayes. Elizabeth Hannigan. Paige Schmitt. Paraskevi Tritsaroli. Anna Karligkioti.

This is an abstract from the "The Bioarchaeology of the Phaleron Cemetery, Archaic Greece: Current Research and Insights" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Phaleron cemetery dates to the Greek Archaic Period (700–480 BCE), a time of great political and social upheaval. Textual accounts from the Archaic period are limited, making bioarchaeological analysis integral to understanding the lived experiences of everyday ancient Athenians. This project...

DOCUMENT Citation Only José Luis Punzo Díaz. Miguel Alberto Ibarra López. Jakob Sedig.

This is an abstract from the "Looking to the West: New insights into Postclassic Archaeology in Michoacán" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This poster will present the first results from the bioarchaeological analysis of more than half a ton of human skeletal remains recovered from the ossuary of the ancient city of Tzintzuntzan on the shores of Lake Patzcuaro in the state of Michoacán, Mexico. In addition to conventional morphological analysis,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Arion Mayes.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The archaeological site of Spiro Mounds was a ceremonial complex with an associated village of artisans and priests. Located on the Arkansas River, a tributary of the Mississippi River, the site is situated in a natural corridor between the Southeast, the Plains, and the Southwestern United States. Long considered a quintessential Mississippian site (AD...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mercedes Okumura. Thomas Kohatsu.

This is an abstract from the "“The South Also Exists”: The Current State of Prehistoric Archaeology in Brazil: Dialogues across Different Theoretical Approaches and Research Agendas" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Biodistance studies (craniometrics and aDNA) have been very useful tools to unravel the biological diversity of human populations in the past. In this abstract, we present biodistance analyses based on cranial measurements in order to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Miikka Tallavaara. Joseph Burger. Trevor Fristoe. Miska Luoto.

This is an abstract from the "Three Sides of a Career: Papers in Honor of Robert L. Kelly" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. For long, anthropologists have recognized latitudinal pattern in hunter-gatherer diet, where plant use increases toward tropics. However, causes of the dietary variability remain unclear reflecting the fact that ecology in general lacks robust theory for predicting geographical variation in the balance of plant and animal foods...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ronald Lippi.

This is an abstract from the "The Barbacoan World: Recognizing and Preserving the Unique Indigenous Cultural Developments of the Northern Andes" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Yumbos, Barbacoan peoples of the western flank of the Andes in northern Ecuador’s Pichincha province, have been the principal object of my studies for the past four decades. I draw upon archaeological research by myself and my team (especially including Alejandra...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Katherine Moore.

This is an abstract from the "Breaking the Mold: A Consideration of the Impacts and Legacies of Richard W. Redding" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The domestication of llamas and alpacas in South America resulted in compelling similarities to sheep and goat pastoralism in Western Asia, but the underlying biology of the wild ancestors of camelids provided distinct challenges to human control and selection. The pastoral economies of South America...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lia Kitteringham. Caroline Graham. Abhishek Sathiakumar. Edward Henry.

This is an abstract from the "Advances in Geoarchaeology and Environmental Archaeology Perspectives on Earthen-Built Constructions" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Pinson Mounds is a large Middle Woodland monument complex centrally located between two other mound centers in west Tennessee. Despite intermittent archaeological research, the Eastern Precinct of Pinson Mounds has remained understudied compared to earthen monuments situated throughout...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Aja Lans. Daniel Sunshine.

This is an abstract from the "Storeroom Taphonomies: Site Formation in the Archaeological Archive" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. University and museum collections containing human remains belonging to members of the African diaspora have recently come under scrutiny and for valid reasons. The curation of the bodies of Black individuals continues to inflict violence and reinforces the notion that Black people are objects, not humans. During the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Oas. R. J. Sinensky.

This is an abstract from the "Enduring Relationships: People, Plants, and the Contributions of Karen R. Adams" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper provides a brief overview of Karen Adams’s career and contributions, with a special emphasis on her extensive research and her legacy as a mentor to decades of junior scholars and budding archaeobotanists. Dr. Adams’s investigations into the long history of people-plant relationships in the US...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Matthew Greer.

This is an abstract from the "Thinking with, through, and against Archaeology’s Politics of Knowledge" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeologists often draw on theories from other disciplines to frame their research, which invariably draws our work into the orbit of larger political debates within and outside the academy. Even a subtle gravitational pull from these political bodies of theory can have substantial effects on how archaeologists...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Daniel Hampson.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Historically, research on prehistoric roads in the southwest has been heavily focused on Chaco and the San Juan Basin, however, these enigmatic anomalies extend into the Central and Western Mesa Verde Regions as well. LiDAR data for the Four Corners area has made it possible to peer through the trees and shrubs of the Great Sage Plain and observe the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mya McWilliam.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The cycles of menstruating bodies have long been characterized in terms of impurity, pathology, and socio-spiritual threat both outside and within the field of archaeology. My research makes use of the archaeological record and existing literature to shed light on the experiences of women and menstruants in prehistory outside of these typically assumed...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ryan McNutt. Camilla Damlund.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. During the American Civil War, Glasgow-built blockade runners emerged as crucial supply conduits to the Confederacy, prolonging the conflict and sustaining chattel slavery by clandestinely running cargo into Confederate ports. This paper delves into the historical archaeology of blockade runner cargos, an area relatively unexplored beyond shipwrecks. It...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lauriane Bourgeon. Rolfe Mandel.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Following its discovery and excavation in the 1970-1980’s, the Bluefish Caves site (northern Yukon Territory, Canada) yielded a small number of stone artifacts and thousands of vertebrate remains buried in late Pleistocene loess. Preliminary taphonomic observations suggested that modern humans visited the caves about 30,000 years ago, raising considerable...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ella Goulding. Anena Majumdar. Hwajung Kim. Erin Riggs.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. There has been a serious reckoning with problematic histories in our discipline, which have involved extractive research—outsiders’ removal of objects and knowledge from local communities. Increasingly, researchers are attempting to address the harms perpetuated by these histories by better serving communities. Often, however, insider/outsider...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Keely Yanito.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the Jornada Mogollon cultural area, anthropomorphic representation in rock art and ceramics provides evidence for prehistoric body modification, specifically tattooing. This presentation will focus on the history of the Jumanos, Tompiro and the Mansos. When the Spanish arrived in El Paso in the 14th century, they encountered the Manso, Jumanos, Tompiro...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Harper Wall.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The anaerobic and highly acidic nature of peat bogs produces a perfect environment for preservation. Biological material which would usually decay, such as human tissue, is kept stagnant unable to decompose thus allowing for preserved individuals and items to be discovered. Peat bogs located in both modern-day Ireland and Scotland have produced an unusual...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kirsten Mink. Anna Novotny. Gabe Wroble.

This is an abstract from the "“The Center and the Edge”: How the Archaeology of Belize Is Foundational for Understanding the Ancient Maya, Part II" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Bioarchaeological studies have taken a central role in developing our current understanding of the sociopolitical and economic organization of the ancient Maya. This is in large part due to advances in methods and theory that allow a deeper contextualization of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Evelyn Breda.

This is an abstract from the "Human Remains in the Marketplace and Beyond: Myths and Realities of Monitoring, Grappling With, and Anthropologizing the Illicit Trade in a Post-Harvard World" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The desire to own human skeletal remains has been prevalent for many years; in our modern technological age avenues for this market have exploded across the internet. This research focuses on Facebook groups dedicated to oddity...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Julia Giblin. Jaime Ullinger. Naomi Gorero. Jillian Clark. Melissa Trudeau.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Bronze Age Körös Off-Tell Archaeology Project (BAKOTA) has excavated 84 burials from a Bronze Age cemetery (Békés 103) located in the Lower Körös Basin in Eastern Hungary. Radiocarbon dates indicate that the cemetery was used for several hundred years, with the most active phase between 1600 and 1280 cal BC, a time that has been associated with the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Thomas Wake.

This is an abstract from the "AD 1150 to the Present: Ancient Political Economy to Contemporary Materiality—Archaeological Anthropology in Honor of Jeanne E. Arnold" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Fragmented bits of worked bone are relatively common in coastal California habitation refuse—or shell middens. I examine collections of worked bone from various mainland and Channel Island archaeological sites with a focus on understanding the role of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Autumn Myerscough.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Through conducting a microwear analysis, I argue that the use wear of the bone tools examined will determine their functional use. The collections of bone tools for this study are from various Mimbres (AD 200–1130) and Chacoan (AD 850–1250) sites (located in the North American Southwest). Many bone artifacts with narrow, pointed distal ends are defined as...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Richard McAuliffe.

This is an abstract from the "The Archaeology of Eagle Nest Canyon, Texas: Papers in Honor of Jack and Wilmuth Skiles" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Bonfire Shelter in the Lower Pecos Canyonlands of southwest Texas provides evidence of sporadic human occupation of the site across the Archaic period. The deposits known as the Intermediate Horizon, bound by two bison bone beds dating to ca. 12,000 BP and 2500 BP, do not reflect the persistent site...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Weston McCool.

This is an abstract from the "Global Perspectives on Human Population Dynamics, Innovation, and Ecosystem Change" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. With the transition to agricultural economies human populations underwent profound changes including, in many regions, rapid growth accompanied by marked volatility. The Colorado Plateau in western North America offers unique insights into volatile population dynamics, as it represents one of the few...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anastasia Iorga. Katheryn C. Twiss. Kathleen M. Wooton. Carrie C. Wright. E. Troy Rasbury.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ethnographic and historical evidence shows that wetlands are highly variable environments, and humans exploit them in both spatially- and seasonally-specific ways. Reconstructing such patterned use with currently-available archaeological methods is extraordinarily difficult or, in most cases, impossible. We have identified a promising new tool for precise...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brendan Weaver. Nicola Sharratt.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Botijas were the universal packaging for dry and liquid goods transported throughout the global Iberian empires of the Early Modern world. Heirs to the potting traditions of Mediterranean amphorae, these vessels are the most ubiquitous ceramics at Spanish colonial sites in the Americas. We present new research combining stylistic analysis and Portable...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Amedeo Sghinolfi. Patrick Mullins.

This is an abstract from the "Beyond Borders at the End of a Millennium: Life in the Western Andes circa 500–50 BCE" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The centuries following the disintegration of the Chavín interaction sphere (~500/400–200/50 BCE) were experienced in myriad ways throughout the ancient Andes. In the Moche and Virú Valleys in northern Peru, the late Early Horizon (~500–200 BCE) generally saw earlier traditions of large ceremonial...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Benjamin Arbuckle.

This is an abstract from the "Interdisciplinary Approaches in Zooarchaeology: Addressing Big Questions with Ancient Animals" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Although cross-cutting disciplinary boundaries from its inception, zooarchaeology has traditionally been most at home among the positivist sciences. As a result, interdisciplinary work has proceeded most easily with science and science-adjacent fields (stable isotopes, aDNA, ecology, etc.) with...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nancy Wicker.

This is an abstract from the "New Work in Medieval Archaeology, Part 2: Crossing Boundaries, Materialities, and Identities" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. While interdisciplinarity in archaeology increasingly has blurred the borders between humanities and sciences, an additional boundary in archaeology exists between what is considered Iron Age and what is medieval. The terms have been defined largely from the Continental point of view. In the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christophe Darmangeat. Jean-Marc Petillon.

This is an abstract from the "The Global “Impact” of Projectile Technologies: Updating Methods and Regional Overviews of the Invention and Transmission of the Spear-Thrower and the Bow and Arrow" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The nearly worldwide diffusion of the bow is often interpreted in terms of its superiority over other weapon systems. There is, however, at least one exception to this diffusion: Australia, where this weapon was never...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Caroline Parris.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The term “curation crisis” describes the challenges facing collections care on a large scale: issues of limited space, staff, and funding and of meeting federal curation standards. Yet, beyond these big picture problems, some of the greatest challenges of managing archaeological collections are the smaller collections problems one inherits from previous...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrew Needham. Stephanie Piper.

This is an abstract from the "Archaeology to Transform and Disrupt: Teaching, Learning, and the Pedagogies of the Future" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Studying a non-school subject such as archaeology at university can be challenging. This knowledge gap can compound barriers for new students, including living away from home, arranging a new job, and making friends. Creating a collaborative learning community is therefore important for...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sandra Lopez Varela.

This is an abstract from the "Building Bridges: Papers in Honor of Teresita Majewski" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In 2014, I had the honor of interviewing Terry Majewski, one of the most influential women in the CRM industry. The insightful dialogue was facilitated through meticulously crafted questions curated by female students participating in my BA course on Heritage Business and Marketing. This conversation delved into her transformative...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kelly Jenks. Lauren Jelinek.

This is an abstract from the "Building Bridges: Papers in Honor of Teresita Majewski" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Preparing students to work in heritage management is a difficult and increasingly urgent task. Some of the biggest challenges faced by educators include large student-to-teacher ratios, the logistical demands of transporting students to and from project areas, the expense of purchasing and maintaining appropriate equipment and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Bastiaan Van Dalen.

This is an abstract from the "Islands around Africa: State-of-the-Art and Future Directions" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. To help protect the Earth’s diverse species from disappearing at an alarming rate, research is needed in important biodiversity hotspots to understand how humans have interacted with their environment throughout history and how these insights can contribute to their future sustainability. Archaeology and paleoecology are...

DOCUMENT Citation Only April Martinez. John Walden. Delmer Tzib. Carlos Quiroz. Frank Tzib.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Belize is rich in cultural diversity and history but has long faced a disconnect between its citizens’ knowledge and the profound legacy of its precolonial past. Belize's ancient Maya remains attracts archaeologists from around the world. Despite this extraordinary heritage, some Belizeans are disconnected from this past, leading to a diminished sense of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Daniela Balanzategui. Marianne Sallum. Yacunã Tuxá. Natasha Gambrell. Stephen Silliman.

This is an abstract from the "Weaving Epistemes: Community-Based Research in Latin America" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper presents the results of the first panel named “Indigenous Archaeologies, Territories, and Human Rights” as part of the seminar “Indigenous and Afro-descendant Peoples in the Americas: Collaboration, Archaeology, Repatriation, and Heritage,” an inter-institutional collaboration between the Interdisciplinary Research...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lisa Young.

This is an abstract from the "Ideas, Ethical Ideals, and Museum Practice in North American Archaeological Collections" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Place and context give meaning to the artifacts that archaeologists uncover. Yet, artifacts are usually curated in museums and archaeological repositories far from the sites where they were unearthed. This spatial disconnect is often a source of tension for descendant communities. Using the Homolovi...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lisa DeLance.

This is an abstract from the "Leveling Up: Gaming and Game Design in Archaeological Education and Outreach" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Starting with the release of the titular game in 2007, creators of the Assassin’s Creed franchise have been showcasing the historical and archaeological record, bringing the past into our living and dorm rooms. Although criticism of the franchise focuses on the pseudoarchaeological connecting storyline, the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Melanie Beasley.

This is an abstract from the "The Intersection of Archaeological Science and Forensic Science" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In 2009, the National Academy of Sciences report on “Strengthening Forensic Science in the United States” emphasized the importance of change needed in forensic science disciplines to ensure reliability, enforceable standards, and to promote best practices. Over the years many archaeologists and bioarchaeologists have...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Isaac Hart. William Taylor. Bayarsaikhan Jamsranjav. Tumurbaatar Tuvshinjargal.

This is an abstract from the "Steppe by Steppe: Advances in the Archaeology of Eastern Eurasia" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Although the late Holocene saw tremendous changes in foodways across the eastern Eurasian steppe, poor preservation of organic and faunal remains make it challenging to trace important changes like the introduction of pastoralism during the Bronze Age and beyond. Here we present preliminary results from two archaeological...