SAS Webinar
“Using ZooMS to understand osseous technology debris: A case study from NW Greenland”
by
Erika Ebel, Graduate Student at University of California Davis
Saturday, February 11, 2023
2:00 p.m. – 3:30 p.m. PST

The site of Iita in northwestern Greenland has had human occupation for the past 1000 years. Two distinct groups have foraged in the area at different times. Materials such as bone, antler and ivory were used for several purposes by these groups, including tool production. As skeletal material is formed into a tool, pieces are discarded, often with characteristics indicative of the method used to create the final product. Data regarding the manufacture, use and discard of the materials has been collected by analyzing the bone materials with a digital microscope. However, many of these small debris have been modified to an extent that few anatomically diagnostic features remain. Such fragments can be identified via Peptide Mass Fingerprinting (PMF), a method for identifying collagen peptides within bone materials to the genus or species level. In this talk Erika will provide background into the history of occupation and discuss her use of PMF to analyze artifacts from the area.

Erika is a graduate student at University of California Davis majoring in Anthropology. She received her Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology from Humboldt State University and Master of Arts in Anthropology from UCD and had advanced to PhD candidacy. She has field experience in Poland, Alaska, and California. Her PhD research is an analysis of faunal materials excavated in 2012 and 2016 at the Iita site.

“Finds and Methods at the University of Wyoming Field School 2022”
by
Haley Bjorklund, Student at University of California Davis
and
“Pont de Bonn Field School”
by
Marlena Billings, University of California Davis Student

Saturday, January 14, 2023
2:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m. PST

“Finds and Methods at the University of Wyoming Field School 2022”
by
Haley Bjorklund, Student at University of California Davis

The La Prele Mammoth site, dating to about 13,000 cal BP is being excavated through the University of Wyoming. It was briefly excavated in the 1980s and then field schools were organized beginning in 2014. Haley attended this field school during 2022 and will discuss her field school experience at La Prele. She will also relate it to Clovis big game hunting.
Haley Bjorklund is an undergraduate student at University of California Davis majoring in Anthropology. She has interned in the Arctic Archaeology lab at UC Davis, working on collections from Greenland and Alaska.

“Pont de Bonn Field School”
by
Marlena Billings, University of California Davis Student

Pont de Bonn (Commune de Modave) is an excavation site in Belgium. The site of ‘Le vieux chateau’ is located on a cliff and shows evidence of pre-Roman occupation that could correspond to the mysterious oppidum of tribe Condruze (which gave their name to the region, ‘le Condroz’) described by Julius Cesar. The site also show later phase of medieval occupations on the defense wall and on the plateau, with a chapel dating back to the Merovingian dynasties. Marlena will talk about the history of the area and discuss her experience at the Pont de Bonn field school.
Marlena is an undergraduate in Anthropology at University of California Davis. She has been an intern at the UCD Center for Experimental Archaeology and focused on experimenting with the production process for rondelles. This research took her to France where she had access to museum artifacts and collected high resolution images of rondelles to continue her research. Sacramental Archeological Society, Inc. provided her with a scholarship in 2021 to support this work. Attendance at the Pont de Bonn field school expands her archaeological experiences.

“Disert Ireland Archaeological Field School- Excavations at an early ecclesiastical site in Co. Donegal, Ireland”
by
Megan Donham, Cal State LA Graduate Student
Monday, January 9, 2023
5:00 – 6:00 PM PST
Disert is a ritual pilgrim landscape in Co. Donegal that includes a series of early ecclesiastical enclosures, penitential carns, a holy well dedicated to St Colmcille (also known as St Columba), a post-medieval altar and a chillín (children’s graveyard). It may date to as early as the sixth century AD when it was reputedly founded by St Colmcille or may even extend back into prehistory. Disert is still important today for religious devotion and for pilgrims seeking miraculous cures for medical conditions. Excavation at the Disert site began in 2019. Megan will talk about the excavation and her experiences at this field school and her post excavation laboratory work.

Megan Donham is a graduate student at California State University, Los Angles. She received her B.A. at University of Nevada, Reno majoring in Anthropology. She gained experience for artifact processing with the Great Basin Consulting Group in Reno, Nevada. In 2018 she attended a University of Oregon Archaeology Field School at the Connley Caves supervised by Dr. Dennis Jenkins and Katelyn McDonough. Her publication in 2020 was Donham, Megan, Richard Rosencrance, Katelyn McDonough, Haden Kingrey and Dennis L. Jenkins, “Debitage Analysis of Younger Dryas Occupations at the Connley Caves and the Identification of New Toolstone in the Fort Rock Basin, Oregon” in Current Archaeological Happenings in Oregon 43(3):17-13.

SAS Webinar
“Water and Wind: Paleoenvironmental and Archaeological Correlations at Rimrock Draw Rockshelter”
by
Pat O’Grady, Archaeologist for University of Oregon
Monday, December 12, 2022
5:00 p.m. – 6:30 p.m. PDT

Rimrock Draw Rockshelter in Harney County, Oregon, has produced a number of artifacts, botanical remains, and sedimentary deposits indicative of both a nearby marsh and substantial stream. Crescentic stone tools are frequently associated with shallow desert lakes and plants like wapato, bulrush, and wada, are also found in similar settings. Massive rounded boulders in the channel adjacent to the rockshelter attest to long term and high energy stream flow. This presentation will focus on how the archaeology and sedimentology at the rockshelter guided us to search for and discover the ancient hydrologic system that made the site attractive between ca. 18,000 to 7,000 years ago.

Pat O’Grady is a staff archaeologist for the University of Oregon Museum of Natural and Cultural History. He has taught classes at the University of Oregon campuses in Bend and Eugene, and summer field schools in Harney County for twenty years. O’Grady has been involved with SAS since 2016 when the Society first visited Rimrock Draw Rockshelter.

Sacramento Archeological Society, Inc.’s
Annual Meeting features a presentation by Jelmer Eerkens, Professor of Anthropology at University of California Davis
“Can we identify these 150 year-old remains? Recent archaeoforensic research in San Francisco, CA”
Saturday, December 3, 2022
1:30 p.m. – 4:30 p.m.

At our annual meeting in addition to a review of the year, a peek into 2023 and our election of officers for 2023, we are pleased to feature a talk by Jelmer Eerkens on archaeoforensic research. The program will be in person at the University of California Davis Campus, Young Hall Room 224.

The schedule for the event is as follows:
1:30 – Meet and Greet
2:00 – SAS Annual Meeting with election of officers for 2023
3:00 – Recent archaeoforensic research in San Francisco by Jelmer Eerkens
4:30 – Socialize at restaurant
At the SAS Annual Meeting President, Tom Johansen will review SAS events for 2022, highlight expectations for 2023, and conduct an election of officers.

Following the annual meeting Jelmer Eerkens will present archaeoforensic research on bones from a woman from San Francisco.

“Digging Olompali”
by
E. Breck Parkman
Monday, November 14, 2022
5:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m. PDT

Breck Parkman’s first assignment as a State Archaeologist was to inventory the cultural resources of Olompali, a brand, new 760-acre State Park in Marin County. According to Breck, one of his most important discoveries was a cultural deposit consisting of artifact-rich fire debris inside the ruins of the former Burdell Mansion. It was here that he found a virtual time capsule of hippie material culture, items that once belonged to the Grateful Dead-affiliated, Chosen Family commune, the residents of the mansion when it was destroyed by fire on February 2, 1969. This presentation describes the importance of that discovery and how, forty years later, it’s still informing our knowledge of the Recent Past.

Breck Parkman was born and raised in Georgia but has made California his home since 1971. He lives in Sonoma with his teenage son. Breck retired from State service in 2017, after four decades as a State Archaeologist. His work took him to all corners of the state, and to places like Kodiak Island, Alaska; the Canadian Plains; the South Coast of Peru; and Central Siberia. He has worked on five continents. Breck earned B.A. and M.A. degrees in Anthropology at California State University, Hayward. He was the founding Director of the UNESCO-sponsored Fort Ross ~ Global Village Project (1996-2000), is a Research Affiliate at the University of California at Berkeley, and a Past President of the Society for California Archaeology. Currently, Breck sits on the Board of Directors of the Sonoma Ecology Center. His research interests are broad and range from Ice Age megafauna to the archaeology of the Recent Past. Breck’s many publications address these and related topics. His work has been featured in hundreds of newspaper, radio, and television interviews and he has appeared in various films and documentaries that have aired on PBS, BBC, and the History and Discovery Channels. Breck is perhaps best known for his work at Olompali, where he has helped develop the field of Contemporary Archaeology through his archaeological study of the Grateful Dead and the Chosen Family commune.
In addition, he has been part of an international project focused on the Upper Paleolithic archaeology and paleoenvironments of southwestern Russia and central Ukraine.

“Tracking the First Americans”
by
Vance Holliday
Monday, October 3, 2022
5:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m. PDT

The question of when people first arrived in the Americas, based on scientific evidence, has been argued for decades and even centuries. For many years the conventional answer was about 13,000 years ago with the appearance of people who made distinctive artifacts called Clovis points (named for a famous archaeological site near Clovis, New Mexico). Other sites have been proposed as being older than Clovis. A few early occupations ~14,000 to ~16,000 years old were about the oldest well-documented sites that were accepted by most (but not all) archaeologists. The White Sands locality changed that for many archaeologists. The site provides convincing evidence that humans were in what is now southern New Mexico between 23,000 and 21,000 years. That is the oldest obvious case we have. Human activity in the form of footprints is quite clear and numerous and the dating is solid. At other sites considered older than Clovis, there are often debates over the age or presence of humans, which is usually based on interpretations of broken rocks or bones as tools.

The time range for the tracks at White Sands is significant because it puts people here during the last Ice Age, which means they were likely here sooner, before the last Ice Age covered essentially all of Canada, from coast to coast (maybe >25,000 years). Getting to the Americas from Asia would be easiest as an Ice Age started or ended because sea level would be lower, and ice wouldn’t full cover Canada. Another noteworthy aspect of the White Sands locality is that the presence of humans is based on the tracks. Very few archaeologists anywhere in the world deal with human tracks, and fewer still deal with tracks as such a critical aspect for arguing that the locality is archaeological.

Vance Holliday received a B.A. in Anthropology from the University of Texas at Austin (1972), an M.A. in Museum Science (with a minor in Soil Science) at Texas Tech University (1977), and a PhD in Geological Sciences at the University of Colorado, Boulder (1982). He was on the Geography faculty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (1986-2002) and is now in both Anthropology and Geosciences at the University of Arizona. His research career began on the Great Plains of the U.S., focused on reconstructing and interpreting the landscapes and environments in which the earliest occupants of North America lived, and how those conditions evolved during the Paleoindian period. Since arriving at the UA he became Director of the Argonaut Archaeological Research Fund, which is devoted to research on the archaeology and geoarchaeology of the Paleoindian period in the southwestern U.S. and northwestern Mexico. In addition, he has been part of an international project focused on the Upper Paleolithic archaeology and paleoenvironments of southwestern Russia and central Ukraine.

“Mound Building Culture of Mississippi Valley Region”
by
Jan Johansen
Monday, September 12, 2022
5:00 p.m. – 6:30 p.m. PDT

Jan and Tom Johansen experienced a driving tour of mound sites in the Mississippi Valley in April, 2022. In this Webinar Jan will discuss the Mound Building Culture of the Mississippi Region and highlight mounds visited in the following states: Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, Missouri, Kentucky, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Iowa. The entire mound building culture can be organized into 6 periods in North America: Archaic era, Woodland period, Coles Creek culture, Mississippian culture, Fort Ancient culture, and Plaquemine culture. She will discuss these period and associate types of mounds viewed to their period. Poverty Point in Louisiana will especially be highlighted.

“Mayan Civilization- a Look into the Past”
by
Jan Johansen
Monday, August 8, 2022
5:00 p.m. – 6:30 p.m. PDT

John and Dan Foster and Jan, Tom and Jeremy Johansen, all SAS members had the pleasure of traveling to the Yucatán to visit Maya sites the end of May, 2022. They visited 16 Mayan sites. In this webinar Jan Johansen will discuss the Mayan civilization highlighting the landscape and climate, cosmology, and a brief history of six sites visited.

Jan Johansen is a retired teacher, software development manager, sales representative, consultant, and business manager (taxes and bookkeeping). She has Bachelor of Science in Mathematics from University of Minnesota and an MBA from California State University Northridge. She has been a board member for Sacramento Archeological Society, Inc. (SAS) over 20 years, holding all officer positions. She has been interested in archaeology for years as an avocation and has participated in excavations in Scotland and California. During the Covid period she has been a regular listener to archaeological webinars. Also, she has been fortunate to travel to many parts of the world to investigate ancient cultures.