56 research outputs found
Archeological Testing Of The Fivemile Crossing Site, 41MN55: A Toyah Site On The San Saba River, Menard County, Texas
Archeological testing of the Fivemile Crossing site, 41MN55, was conducted by Prewitt and Associates, Inc., for the Texas Department of Transportation in November 2006. Located on an alluvial terrace along the San Saba River about 4.3 miles west of Menard, Texas, the site consists of a shallowly buried Late Prehistoric or Protohistoric occupation. Eighteen hand-excavated test units sampled 13.5 m2 from two very narrow strips of intact deposits within the right of way on both sides of FM 2092. The excavations recovered chipped stone artifacts and bone-tempered pottery from a single occupation zone attributed to the Toyah culture. What remains of the site inside the right of way is minimal and is considered not eligible for listing in the National Register of Historic Places or designation as a State Antiquities Landmark. The road improvements were allowed to proceed without further archeological investigations
TA31: The Early Prehistory of Fiji
I enjoyed reading this volume. It is rare to see such a comprehensive report on hard data published these days, especially one so insightfully contextualised by the editorsâ introductory and concluding chapters. These scholars and the others involved in the work really know their stuff, and it shows. The editors connect the preoccupations of Pacific archaeologists with those of their colleagues working in other island regions and on âbig questionsâ of colonisation, migration, interaction and patterns and processes of cultural change in hitherto-uninhabited environments. These sorts of outward-looking, big-picture contextual studies are invaluable, but all too often are missing from locally- and regionally-oriented writing, very much to its detriment. In sum, the work strongly advances our understanding of the early prehistory of Fiji through its well-integrated combination of original research and the reinterpretation of existing knowledge in the context of wider theoretical and historical concerns. In doing so The Early Prehistory of Fiji makes a truly substantial contribution to Pacific and archaeological scholarship
Hurricane Landing: An Analysis of Site 22LA516 in Sardis Lake, Lafayette County, Mississippi
Site 22LA516, known as Hurricane Landing, is a single mound early Mississippian site located in the middle of Sardis Lake, Lafayette County, Mississippi. As part of a 2015 joint salvage archaeology project between the Center for Archaeological Research (CAR) and the Vicksburg District Corp of Engineers, nine pit features were excavated. Analyses of the ceramics and lithic remains recovered from the features, combined with AMS dates, were conducted with the focus of better understanding Hurricane Landing within its North Central Hills region of Mississippi. Hurricane Landingâs 2015 excavation ceramic collection contains shell tempered and grog tempered plainware with several shell tempered decorated types and no grog tempered decorated types. Analysis of the lithics recovered indicates Hurricane Landing imported Citronelle and Ft. Payne Chert with long trajectory Citronelle production and short trajectory Ft. Payne production. Settlement data for the North Central Hills indicate a population shift to downriver floodplains in the early Mississippian. The results of the ceramic and lithic analyses coupled with the AMS dating, indicate that the pit features were filled from around AD 1165 to roughly AD 1295, strongly suggest that Hurricane Landing is a transitional Mississippian site
Excavations at Yuthu A Community Study of an Early Village in Cusco, Peru (400-100BC).
Cusco, Peru is best known as the capital of the Inka Empire (AD 1300-1600). While Inka archaeology has been the focus of extensive research, very little is known about the people who lived in Cusco before the Inka. This project is the first systematic excavation in the region focused on the Formative period (400-100 BC). Because so little is known about villages from this time, this dissertation approaches the study of a single community in a holistic way, examining subsistence practices, craft production, and ritual activities. Using data that I collected from the site of Yuthu during three seasons of excavation (2005-2007), I have found that these early villagers utilized more than one ecological zone to meet their subsistence needs. On the high plain surrounding the village, they farmed quinoa and herded llamas and alpacas, and they probably cultivated maize in the warmer Sacred Valley located œ day walk from the village. Through excavation of households, I have found evidence for myriad daily activities (such as cooking, fuel collecting, and cranial modification) as well as periodic activities (such as pottery making and weaving). In addition, a sunken court, ritual canals, and human burials were found in a sector that was used for ceremonial activities during the early occupation of Yuthu. Based on this ritual structure and the activities carried out within it, I argue that early villagers understood group identity above the level of the household in terms of relationships with the living features of the landscape. Later, mummy-focused rituals shifted the focal point of ceremonial activities from the group level to factions within the village, most likely lineages. The structure in the ceremonial center was eventually abandoned while mummy veneration continued. For some time, however, large group ritual and lineage-focused ancestor veneration were two potentially conflicting practices that existed alongside each other. A ceremonial system that incorporated ancestors and the landscape played an important role in creating and maintaining community cohesion even as it became a venue for competition that may have played an important role in the emergence of inherited inequality and multi-village polities during the Formative period.Ph.D.AnthropologyUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/77894/1/davisar_1.pd
Reconsidering Lapita Ancestry: Evidence of Material Change and Migration on Tutuila Island, American Samoa
Recent advances in the archaeology of the Samoan Islands have forced us to
reconsider the generally accepted phylogenetic model for the chronology of cultural
change in prehistoric Samoa. In this dissertation I use new archaeological evidence from
excavations at multi-component sites across the islands of American Samoa to measure
the degree to which the archaeological record supports the accepted linguistics-based
phylogenetic model for Samoan cultural transformation. Specifically, I focus on multi-component
sites to assess the social implications of diachronic change in pottery
production, obsidian use and basalt tool manufacture.
To expand our understanding of the chronology for cultural change in the
Samoan Archipelago I study the chronology of site use and tool production at Vainuâu,
âAoa, Aganoa and Matautia on Tutuila Island and offer recalibrated radiocarbon dates
from Toâaga on Ofu Island. The findings from these multi-component sites show that
differences in traditions of stone tool production and raw material provisioning
accompany the noted cessation of pottery production ca. 1,500-1,700 B.P. Two
identifiable forms of technological organization, attributed to the Ceramic Period and
Monument Building Period components, are separated in time by several centuries of
reduced population density across the study area. Patterning in the chronology of site
use and technological change provides support for a cultural hiatus with demographic
decline in the Samoan Islands beginning ca. 1,500 B.P
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The Black Mountain phase occupation at Old Town : an examination of social and technological organization in the Mimbres Valley of southwestern New Mexico, ca. A.D 1150 - 1300
textThe Black Mountain phase of the Mimbres Mogollon cultural tradition, dating from around A.D. 1150 through A.D. 1300, is perhaps the most poorly understood time period of the entire Mimbres sequence. During that time, people inhabiting the Mimbres Valley of southwestern New Mexico adopted new ceramic sequences, ceased producing Black-on-white pottery, adopted new architectural styles, and possibly changed mortuary patterns. These changes have been interpreted in a multitude of ways that can be reduced to models of continuity and discontinuity. Unfortunately, these models and interpretations rest on a very limited set of data that comes largely from three moderately tested Black Mountain phase sites in the Mimbres Valley proper: Montoya, Old Town, and Walsh. Thus, arguments for or against either model based on the presence of absence of particular traits are necessarily limited by the modest data from these three sites. It was in this context of opposing interpretations that other aspects of the life ways of Black Mountain phase peoples were analyzed. Specifically, I look at the ways lithic and ceramic technologies were organized to assess if the changes that occurred during the Black Mountain phase also represent changes in the ways social systems were organized. I believe that while certain aspects of material culture such as shifts in ceramic or architectural style are easily changed whereas the social mechanisms responsible for their production are more resistant. The results of these analyses demonstrate that there are more similarities than differences with respect to the manner in which technologies were organized during the time periods traditionally accepted as representing âMimbresâ manifestations and the Black Mountain phase. Thus, the social mechanisms dictating the processes of production, distribution, transmission, and reproduction appear to be similar from the Pithouse periods through the Black Mountain phase. This research adds to the growing body of evidence that suggests continuity between the Classic period inhabitants of the Mimbres area and later Black Mountain phase peoples.Anthropolog
"THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF TANAMU 1
Presenting results from Tanamu 1, the first site to be published in detail in the Caution Bay Studies in Archaeology series. Yielding well-provenanced and finely dated assemblages of ceramics, faunal remains, and stone and shell artefacts, these remarkable sites extend the range of the Lapita cultural complex to the south coast of Papua New Guinea
Debating Lapita: Distribution, chronology, society and subsistence
âThis volume is the most comprehensive review of Lapita research to date, tackling many of the lingering questions regarding origin and dispersal. Multidisciplinary in nature with a focus on summarising new findings, but also identifying important gaps that can help direct future research.â â Professor Scott Fitzpatrick, Department of Anthropology, University of Oregon âThis substantial volume offers a welcome update on the definition of the Lapita culture. It significantly refreshes the knowledge on this foundational archaeological culture of the Pacific Islands in providing new data on sites and assemblages, and new discussions of hypotheses previously proposed.â â Dr FrĂ©dĂ©rique Valentin, Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS), Paris This volume comprises 23 chapters that focus on the archaeology of Lapita, a cultural horizon associated with the founding populations who first colonised much of the south west Pacific some 3000 years ago. The Lapita culture has been most clearly defined by its distinctive dentate-stamped decorated pottery and the design system represented on it and on further incised pots. Modern research now encompasses a whole range of aspects associated with Lapita and this is reflected in this volume. The broad overlapping themes of the volumeâLapita distribution and chronology, society and subsistenceârelate to research questions that have long been debated in relation to Lapita
The Archaeology of Tanamu 1: A Pre-Lapita to Post-Lapita Site from Caution Bay, South Coast of Mainland Papua New Guinea
[Extract] The discovery in 2010 of stratified Lapita assemblages at Caution Bay near Port Moresby, south coast of mainland Papua New Guinea (PNG) (David et al. 2011; McNiven et al. 2011), brought to the fore a series of important questions (Richards et al. 2016), many of which also apply to other parts of Island Melanesia where Lapita sites have been known for many decades. Unlike other parts of Melanesia, however, at Caution Bay some of the Lapita sites also have pre-Lapita horizons. A number are culturally very rich. At Caution Bay, where the oldest confirmed Lapita finds date to no earlier than c. 2900 cal BP (McNiven et al. 2012a), the major questions do not concern the earliest expressions of Lapita around 3300â3400 cal BP. Rather, here we are concerned more with identifying how assemblages associated with the Lapita cultural complex arrived and transformed along the south coast, after a presence in coastal and island regions to the northeast over the previous 400 years. These concerns contain both spatial and temporal elements: how and when, as a prelude to why, particular cultural traits continued and changed across Caution Bay. Tanamu 1 is the first of 122 archaeological sites excavated in Caution Bay upon which we will report. As a site, it represents the ideal entry point, as being a coastal site which contains pre-Lapita, Lapita and post-Lapita horizons it encapsulates many of the signatures, trends and transformations seen across the >5000 year Caution Bay sequence at large. Of special note in the wider context of Lapita archaeology, the presence of rich pre-Lapita horizons is what makes Caution Bay so important both in and of itself and for the Lapita story
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