X Marks the Spot: Mapping as the Key to Unlocking the Crosspatch Site’s Past”
by
Jessica Weinmeister
Monday, August 14, 2023
5:00 PM – 6:00 PM PT

The Crosspath Site (5DL858, formerly Sarvell Site and Berry Ruin) is a large Ancestral Pueblo community center with Basketmaker through Pueblo II components. Crosspath is located between the Central Mesa Verde region and southeast Utah and has influence from Kayenta and Chaco. Jessica Weinmeister’s Master’s thesis addressed the question whether flaked stone tools were made at the site and/or exchanged and whether these behaviors changed over time. To gather data for this research Jessica and crew conducted field work at Crosspatch including site mapping and collecting of ceramics and lithics in June 2022. In this presentation Jessica will introduce the Crosspath Site and share her research results.

Jessica Weinmeister graduated with a Masters from New Mexico State University. She received her B.A. Summa cum Laude in Anthropology from Western Colorado University. Her professional experience includes Museum Graduate Assistant at the University Museum, New Mexico State University, Los Cruses, NM; Public Archaeology Intern at Crow Canyon Archaeological Center, Cortez, NM, and Cultural Resource Management at Western Colorado University, Gunnison, CO. Her field work included Maya Archaeological Field School and Haynie and Dillard excavation sites through Crow Canyon Archaeological Center, Cortez. Her independent research included Ceramics Analysis Research Project and Lithic Analysis Honor Thesis, and Lithic Analysis Research Project where she analyzed flaked stone tools from the Crosspatch site. She has two publications.

SAS Webinar
“Sir Francis Drake Landed in California?”
by
Melissa Darby
Monday, June 12, 2023
5:00 PM – 6:00 PM PT

English Navigator and sometime pirate Francis Drake and his crew of eighty men, and one Black woman named Maria, were in peril in the early summer of 1579. Their ship, the Golden Hind, was leaking, and they were searching an uncharted coast for a safe harbor. Though Drake had captured several tons of Spanish treasure, this voyage was not a piratical adventure: Drake was on a secret mission for Queen Elizabeth. He was to explore the west coast of America to find lands to claim for England in regions beyond the possessions of any ‘Christian Prince’; and to ‘seek the strait’ — the entrance to the fabled Northwest Passage. Failing to find the passage, and in danger of sinking, they had to find a bay or harbor that fit the necessary requirements for careening a wooden ship. Sailing south, they found a ‘fair & good bay’ where they spent most of the summer. Though Drake’s logs and charts are long lost, various narratives of the landing survive. Some of the confusion about where Drake landed is because the original sources don’t agree on the location of the fair bay. So the debate has come down to what original source was considered more authoritative; the official account by Queen Elizabeth’s appointed publisher, Richard Hakluyt, who put the bay at 38° north around San Francisco or two contemporary manuscripts that describe that Drake came in on the prevailing winds and currents at about 48° north and his fair bay stood at 44° north latitude.

Melissa Darby is an award-winning historian and anthropologist, and affiliated research faculty in the Anthropology Department at Portland State University. She is principal investigator and sole proprietor of Lower Columbia Research & Archaeology. Darby has worked for over forty years in the Northwest and is a noted authority on the ethnohistory of the Native people of the lower Columbia River region. Her research on Native American cultures of the area includes important works on settlement patterns, plankhouse architecture, and plant foods used by the indigenous people of the region. She has contributed substantially to our understanding of the Native peoples and the world they inhabited prior to European colonization. Her book Thunder Go North the Hunt for Sir Francis Drake’s Fair & Good Bay was published by the University of Utah Press in 2019 and is about the mysterious and vexed question of where Francis Drake landed the Golden Hind in the summer of 1579.

SAS Webinar
South Africa during Later Stone Age
Saturday May 13, 2023
2:00 p.m. – 3:00 PM PT
“Early Later Stone Age at Knysna Cave, South Africa: Analysis of lithic assemblages”
by
Sara Watson

The beginning of the Later Stone Age is argued to correspond to the introduction of subsistence, mobility, and land use patterns documented in the ethnographic record. However, the earliest technologies of this period, known as the Early Later Stone Age, or ELSA, are poorly defined. The ELSA can be found as early as 40 ka and as late as about 19 ka. There are very few sites with well-described ELSA assemblages, with some researchers suggesting that the apparent variability between assemblages would reflect a shift in occupation to the now submerged continental shelf to follow the receding coastline. In this presentation, Sara will discuss the ELSA from Knysna Eastern Heads Cave 1, a currently unpublished site located on the southern coast of South Africa. In this presentation Sara Watson will define the Stone Age periods, focus on lithic changes in the ELSA in South Africa, and provide a first look at the beginnings of the Later Stone Age along the southern coast

Sara Watson is a graduating PhD candidate at University of California Davis. She has a BA from University of Texas at Arlington, and an MA from University of California, Davis. She has been involved with extensive field work and research projects associated with South Africa including GeoArcheaology Working Group; Experimental investigation of costs and benefits of lithic heat treatment in the Middle Stone Age; Middle Stone Age technological organization at Nelson Bay Cave, South Africa; Doring River Archaeology Project; Center for Experimental Archaeology, at Davis;, Knysa Paleocape and Middle Stone Age Research Project; Experimental examination of structural changes in silcrete during heat treatment; small tool production at Montagu Cave, South Africa and McNair Scholars Summer Research Internship. She has two publications as a first author and a third one as co-author.

SAS Webinar
“Glittering and Glassy: Understanding the Intersection Of Colonial Mineral Extractivism and The Production of Late Rio Grande Lead Glaze-Painted Pottery In Seventeenth-Century New Mexico”
by
Danielle Marie Huerta
Saturday, November 11, 2023
2:00 PM – 3:30 PM PT

What happens to Indigenous technologies when the dissemination of Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) is forced to occur within a historical context characterized by colonial regimes of labor exploitation and religious/ideological subjugation? Within anthropology and archaeology, researchers have sought to answer this question through problematic narratives and models of culture contact and technological change, such as that of “quick replacement”— or the immediate abandonment of indigenous tools and technology in favor of European ones after conquest. However, this model ignores the intellectual contributions of Indigenous people whose ways of knowing have historically gone unacknowledged. In order to understand how Colonialism affects the very systems of knowledge it appropriates, it is necessary to understand how that knowledge is situated within Indigenous ways of interacting with and viewing the world around them. Danielle Marie Huerta will be presenting initial results from her multi-sited and methodologically diverse dissertation project that aims to understand how Spanish colonial mining practices in New Mexico may have impacted the ability of Pueblo potters to create and maintain communities of practice, cultural perceptions of place, and the ability to pass down sociotechnical knowledge from one generation to the next, ultimately leading to the decision by said potters to stop producing glaze-painted pottery in the early eighteenth-century.

Danielle Marie Huerta is a PhD Candidate at University of California, Santa Cruz. She received her B.A. in Anthropology from Texas A & M University, College Station in 2015 and M.A. from University of California, Santa Cruz in 2017. She is currently a Graduate Student Researcher and Archaeological Technician at Los Alamos National Laboratory where she supports their Environmental Protection and Compliance group with managing cultural resources. She has served as an Archaeological Technician with the Cibola National Forest, SEARCH, Inc., Aspen CRM Solutions, and Bureau of Land Management – New Mexico State Office. She has participated in multiple survey and excavation projects in the state of New Mexico since her first field school in Abiquiu in 2014.

Friends are welcome and also invited to join our organization. There is no participation fee.

SAS Webinar
“Living on the Spine of the World: Placemaking at Early Community Centers Rincon, UT”
by
Daniel Hampson
Monday, April 10, 2023
5:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m. PT

Rincon Bench, located on the northern bench above the San Juan River at the intersection of Comb Ridge in southeast Utah has been the site for large communities from 500 BCE through 900 CE. Many archaeological sites exist at this intersection. Three different temporal community centers—the Basketmaker II, Basketmaker III, and Pueblo I periods—were constructed and used by ancestral Puebloans at Rincon Bench. Daniel’s thesis research has focused on an intensive survey of sites in this Rincon Bench Community. Daniel will discuss the results of his survey and offer insight into Mesa Verde prehistory and this region.

Daniel Hampson is a graduate student at New Mexico State University expecting to graduate this spring with a Master of Arts in Anthropology. He received a Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology from Fort Lewis College in 2016. Since then as archaeologist with Woods Canyon Archaeological Consultants and Archaeological Lab Employee at Crow Canyon Archaeological Center, Cortez, Daniel has extensive experience analyzing human remains, faunal, lithic, non-flaked lithic and ceramic collections on archaeological projects in Colorado, Utah, New Mexico and Arizona. Daniel has used this growing experience to perform the research on Rincon Bench.

SAS Seminar/Webinar
“Born with a Lead Spoon in their Mouth: Life History & Health in 19th Century San Francisco” by
Diana Malarchik
and
“Canid Analysis”
by
Jessica Morales
Saturday April 8, 2023
2:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m. PT

On December 3, 2022 at our annual meeting Jelmer Eerkens gave a fascinating presentation, “Can we identify these 150 year-old remains? Recent archaeoforensic research in San Francisco”. Diana Malarchik participated in this research and will give additional information on this topic from her perspective.

Diana Malarchik is a graduate student at University of California Davis. She received a BA, Secondary Education and MA, Biological Anthropology from the University of Nevada, Reno. She worked as an associate archaeologist for ECORP Environmental Consultants and as an associate bioarchaeologist for PAE Environmental Services from 2018 to 2019. She has a professional publication in Dental Anthropology Journal and has given multiple professional presentations. In addition, she was a 7th Grade instructor in Reno, NV.

Jessica Morales. On April 10, 2021 she gave a presentation on her dissertation topic: “the potential use of dogs for hunting”. Since then, she has refined her research. She is striving to identify domestic dogs from other canids by examining their diets through stable isotope analysis. She received a scholarship from SAS to use stable isotope analysis of bone collagen and bone apatite canid remains to do this analysis.

Jessica is a PhD candidate at University of California Davis She received her B.A. and M.A. from California State University, Los Angeles, CA. She has developed laboratory skills in California Coastal Archaeology Lab, California State University Los Angeles and University of California Davis Archaeolmetry Laboratory. She was crew chief for University of California, Davis field school “Poryecto Arcaico Cuenca de Titicaca in 2019’ and for California State University, Los Angeles field school at Point Mugu State Park, Ventura, CA in 2014, As an archaeologist she worked for Duke CRM and John Minch and Associates for New Hall, Chino Hills and Riete-Aid Phelan projects. Between 2014 and 2018 she worked as an archaeological Field Technician for SWCA Environmental Consultants. She also has a lengthy list of professional presentations.

SAS Webinar
“Analyzing Upper Paleolithic blank cutting edge efficiency at Tolbor, Mongolia”
by
Corey Johnson
Monday, March 13, 2023
5:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m. PT

Overview of presentation: The appearance of Initial Upper Paleolithic (IUP) technology in northern East Asia ca. 45 kya marks a significant change in the lithic archaeological record of the region. Understanding the economic trade-offs within IUP tool kits can help reveal important information regarding how those systems operated, and how they compare to later Upper Paleolithic (UP) technologies that developed thereafter. Corey will address the IUP record from Tolbor Valley, Mongolia by investigating a key techno-economic aspect of the lithic tool kit: blank cutting-edge length. To this end, Corey analyzed and compared data from four different lithic assemblages dating between ca. 45-20 kya including IUP and later UP variants. The results of the diachronic analysis of cutting-edge efficiency suggest that, in the Tolbor Valley, larger IUP blanks were made relatively more efficiently than smaller ones, and that during the later stages of the UP there was a gradual shift toward the economization of smaller blanks, particularly with the introduction of pressure microblades during the Last Glacial Maximum.

Corey Johnson is a PhD candidate at University of California Davis. His dissertation research consists of using a techno-economic approach for understanding how Paleolithic technological efficiency changed over time in East Asia (specifically in what is today Mongolia and northern China). Following this approach, he reconstructs stone artifact production systems preserved within archaeological sites, then measures and compares the efficiency of the different systems both within and between sites. The results will contribute to our understanding of the tempo and mode of technological change during the Paleolithic in East Asia, and their relationship to human evolutionary history in the region.
Friends are welcome and also invited to join our organization. There is no participation fee.

SAS Webinar
“All bones great, small, and unidentifiable: analysis of faunal remains from Wallace Great House, Colorado”
by
Lucy Maun
Saturday, March 11, 2023
10:00 AM – 11:30 AM PT
As an outlier from Chaco Great House, Wallace Great House (5MT6970) in Cortez, Colorado has been excavated intermittently by the Wallace Ruin Project since 1969, and consistently since 2008. Dr. Bruce Bradley is the primary investigator. Recent excavations have uncovered a deposit of faunal remains and pottery in Room 62. These remains include large mammal bones, cervids, lagomorphs, and exotic species such as raptors and canines. Preliminary examination suggests that a large proportion of the bones were intentionally fractured. The unusual representation of species and butchery evidence may imply the deposit had a ritual use. This also coincides with site’s reuse for ritual purposes from AD 1180, after a period of disuse AD 1140-1180. Activity from this period, including Kiva 56 and Room 62, centered around a large Chaco kiva. Establishing a connection between the faunal deposit and the kivas could illuminate cultural aspects of Puebloan ritual life, such as feasting practices.

Lucy Maun is a graduate student at London’s Global University, UCL. She received her undergraduate degree at University of Exeter, UK. After graduation she worked with Exeter’s archaeology department as a research assistant and worked on assemblage material. She led a research project on the changing role of goats in the UK since their introduction in the Neolithic period. As part of this project she evaluated goat isotope data to test a hypothesis about whether carbon and nitrogen isotopes could show a geographical partition between populations. Lucy engaged in a research project to analyze the faunal remains from the Wallace Great House. SAS supported her research through a scholarship.

SAS Webinar
“Finding Solace in the Soil: The Archaeology of Gardens and Gardeners at Colorado’s Japanese American Incarceration Camp”
by
Dr. Bonnie J. Clark, University of Denver
Monday, February 13, 2023
5:00 p.m. – 6:30 p.m. PDT
During World War II, Americans of Japanese ancestry were removed from their homes and placed into confinement camps throughout the western US. This presentation overviews the methods and results of six seasons of landscape archaeology at one of those sites—Amache—located in southeastern Colorado. The site contains an incredibly well-preserved record of how the people incarcerated there transformed a hostile landscape through strategy and skill. By integrating a program of historical research, community engagement, and intensive garden archaeology, the University of Denver Amache project is expanding the view of what incarceree gardens are, how they were created, and their import, both to those who made them and us today.

Bonnie J. Clark, Ph.D. University of Denver is committed to using tangible history–objects, sites, and landscapes—to broaden understanding of our diverse past. She began her career as a professional archaeologist and now serves as a Professor in the Anthropology Department at the University of Denver (DU), as well as the Curator for Archaeology of the DU Museum of Anthropology. She is the author or editor of numerous publications including “Finding Solace in the Soil: An Archaeology of Gardens and Gardeners” at Amache and “On the Edge of Purgatory: An Archaeology of Place in Hispanic Colorado”. Dr. Clark leads the DU Amache Project, a community collaboration committed to researching, preserving, and interpreting the physical history of Amache, Colorado’s WWII-era Japanese American internment camp. That work has been highlighted innumerous venues including Archaeology and American Archaeology magazines.