SAS Webinar
Saturday, October 9, 2021
2:00 p.m.
“Queen of Sheba”
by
Lynette Blumhardt

Scholars do not agree on where ancient Sheba was or whether or not the Queen of Sheba ever existed. There are a number of contenders for a possible location of Sheba. One site would be modern Yemen. The other is the Kingdom of Aksum which spanned the Red Sea from Ethiopia to Yemen. Both benefited from trade routes through their territories. Frankincense and other spices were prized trade goods.

The Bible’s Old Testament and the Quran describe the queen and her journey to visit King Solomon. She has been part of the Hebrew and Christian faiths for centuries, and the queen is an enduring cultural icon. Yet her existence has never been proved. American archaeologist and explorer Wendell Phillips wanted to be the first to locate proof of her and her realm. He ventured into Yemen in the 1950s to search for signs of the Queen of Sheba. His team excavated sites but found no evidence of the queen.

Lynette Blumhardt is a member of Sacramento Archeological Society, Inc.’s Board of Directors. She became fascinated with anthropology when she was in elementary school. This interest continued and was expanded through many anthropology classes and volunteering on more than a dozen archaeological
excavations. The Queen of Sheba is one of her fascinations.

SAS Webinar

Saturday, August 14, 2021

2:00 p.m.

“The Robberg of Southern Africa: Late Glacial Lithic Technology”

by Sara Watson, PhD candidate UC Davis

The Robberg technocomplex is one of southern Africa’s most distinctive and cohesive technologies and found in cave and rock shelter sites across southern Africa at the end of Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 2 and the Last Glacial Maximum. Since its early description, the Robberg Industry has typically been considered a relatively stable technology across southern Africa. However, focus on broad-scale similarities has masked temporal and spatial variability in Robberg technological organization. Recent research has focused on examining differences in Robberg technology, the meaning of which is still poorly understood. In this presentation, I will review the current state of research on the Robberg and present new case studies of lithic technology from Robberg assemblages in western South Africa and the south coast.

Sara Watson is a PhD student in the Department of Anthropology at UC Davis. She received her BA (Summa cum Laude) in Anthropology at University of Texas and an Masters in Anthropology at UC Davis. Her research focuses on human decision-making surround stone tool production 50,000 to 20,000 years ago in southern Africa. Her work thus far has resulted in two publications (one as first author), two manuscripts in review(one as first author) and three manuscripts in preparation (all as first author).

SAS Webinar

Saturday, July 10, 2021

2:00 p.m.

“The Potential of Obsidian Hydration Dating for Titicaca Basin Archaeology”

by Luis A. Flores-Blanco, PhD student at UC Davis

Description of presentation

A projectile point chronology for the South-Central Andes currently provides some chronological control for dating sites in the region (Klink and Aldenderfer 2005), however, flakes, many of them of obsidian, are the most common type of lithic material recovered from the surface of Archaic and Formative period sites in the Titicaca Basin, Central-South Andes. Obsidian hydration dating (OHD) can be used to date them and thus help to know the temporality of the sites, and obsidian is a very frequent material. Despite the OHD has been used in some Andean regions (e.g., Eerkens et al. 2008; Tripcevich et al. 2012, Bell 1977), it is not currently used in that region because a calibration curve does not yet exist. Luis’ immediate goal has been achieved, he has learned this technique, acquired the appropriate equipment installed in Peru to obtain the samples, and has been able to identify the hydration bands in a small obsidian sample of the Titicaca Basin. From these preliminary results, he will show the great potential that the use of OHD has for Andean archaeology and that continuing with the construction of an OHD calibration curve in the Titicaca Basin is feasible.

Luis A. Flores-Blanco, a Peruvian archaeologist is currently pursuing a PhD at the University of California, Davis. He received a Masters in Prehistoric Archaeology at Complutense University of Madrid, Spain after receiving a Bachelor of Archaeology at the University of San Marcos in Peru. He has been a productive scholar publishing peer-reviewed articles and editing volumes on Peruvian archaeology. He has been co-director and director of archaeological excavations at Puno and Lima, Peru. Before joining the Anthropology PhD Program he was director of a research center at the UNESCO world heritage site of Chavín. In his current studies, Luis is attempting to understand emergent social complexity in the South-Central Andes and proposes to develop an obsidian hydration curve for his study region. His dissertation is titled “The roots of the social inequality in Peru’s Lake Titicaca Basin 4000 Years Ago”.

SAS Webinar

Saturday, June 12, 2021

2:00 p.m.

“The Olmec Cascajal Block through the Portable Portals”

by Joanne Carpenter

The Cascajal Block is a tablet-sized writing slab in Mexico made of serpentinite which has been dated to the early first millennium BCE. It is incised with hitherto unknown characters that may represent the earliest writing system in the New World. Joanne will discuss the possible link between this discovery and the Olmec civilization. The Cascajal Block was first discovered in 1999 and refused as a possible connection to the Olmec; however many archaeologists are academically finding evidence to prove its arrival is connected to Olmec representation.

Joanne Carpenter is a native Hawaiian.  James Booth Cummings of the Cummings Clan is her great grandfather her and her great grandmother; Sarah Nela Kaimu Kuhaulua is a third generation Native Hawaiian. She resides on the big island and has a AA and BA in Anthropology. She is a member of the Sacramento Archeological Society and with pleasure she has served as the Vice President with Travis County Archeological Society in Texas for years. She has 18 years of archaeology experience in the field and taught grade school. At an early age she searched the ground for artifacts and still does. 

SAS Webinar

Saturday, May 8, 2021

2:00 p.m.

Polynesian Contact with the Americas: An Update

By Terry Jones, Department of Social Sciences, California Polytechnic State University

and Kathryn A. Klar, University of California, Berkeley

The possibility of prehistoric Polynesian contact with the Americas has been considered by historians, archaeologists, and other scholars for centuries. Most evidence and most scholarly discourse have focused on South America, but as early as the 1930s, Alfred Kroeber suggested that cultural similarities between southern California and Oceania could be the product of prehistoric trans-oceanic diffusion. This talk reviews archaeological, linguistic, and other evidence for such contact in North and South America with an emphasis on recent genetic studies that challenge some longstanding ideas.

Dr. Terry Jones joined the Cal Poly San Luis Obispo faculty in 1998. His research interests include North American prehistory, hunter-gatherer ecology, and maritime adaptations. His area of geographic expertise is the central California coast, where he has conducted field research for the last 35 years. He is actively involved in research on a number of issues related to the archaeology and ecology of prehistoric California including: the impacts of late Holocene droughts on indigenous populations, the effects of human-caused extinction of the flightless duck (Chendytes lawi) on nearshore ecology during the Holocene, the prehistory of fishing on the central California coast, and possible pre-Columbian Polynesian contact with the New World. His most recently published books focus on the archaeology and prehistory of the Pecho Coast and Morro Bay in San Luis Obispo County.

Dr. Kathryn Klar is a historical/comparative and anthropological linguist. Her specialties are California Indian languages, especially Chumashan languages, and Celtic languages and cultures. She was a lecturer in the Celtic Studies at UC Berkeley, and is now retired. She has a special interest in the original peopling of the Americas, and long-distance relationships between languages. She works with the Northern Chumash people on their language revitalization program.

SAS Webinar

Saturday, April 10, 2021

2:00 p.m.

‘Evaluating the Dog as A Hunting Tool in Prehistoric Alta and Baja California: Preliminary Results’

by Jessica Morales

California hunter-gatherer(-fishers) archaeology has long focused in understanding forager decision making related to mobility, residency, subsistence practices, and technology. Notably, stone tools have dominated the discussion of technology in relation to human adaptation through time and space. Jessica’s dissertation project aims to bring dogs to the discussion of tools employed by California hunter-gatherers. The goals of Jessica’s study are to (1) identify dogs from other canids in the archaeological record, (2) identify hunting dogs from other dogs, and (3) examine changes in key prey before and after the adoption of dogs. The first step involves a combination of traditional zooarchaeological methods, geometric morphometrics, and stable isotopes. This first step is crucial to begin to address the second and third steps. The preliminary results of the first step are presented in this webinar.

Jessica Morales is a graduate student at University of California Davis. She received an M.A. from California State University, Los Angeles in 2019 and a scholarship from SAS in 2020 to support her hunting dogs research..

SAS Webinar
Saturday, March 13, 2021
2:00 p.m. PDT
Seven Outstanding Petroglyph Sites in Central and Northwest California: Tales of Discovery and Collaboration
By Dan Foster

This presentation will discuss the early years of the Archaeology Program at the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CalFire), and its successful outreach utilizing volunteers, landowners, and archaeologically-trained personnel. The result was some remarkable petroglyph site documentation. Dan Foster, a retired Cal Fire Archaeologist has first-hand experience with the discovery and recording of California petroglyphs.

Dan received a B.A. degree in Anthropology from California State University Stanislaus where he studied archaeology and cultural resource management under Dr. L. Kyle Napton from 1973-1977. During his 34 years of public service he developed and led an archaeology program for the CA Department of Forestry and Fire Protection to identify and protect cultural resources within the 30 million acres of State Responsibility Area lands. He has prepared detailed site records and reports for hundreds of archaeological sites including five published articles on prehistoric California Rock Art. He retired from State Service in 2012 and has become an active member of the Sacramento Archaeological Society.

SAS Webinar
Saturday, February 13, 2021
2:00 p.m.
Peopling of the Tibetan Plateau: the occupation history and high-altitude adaptation
by Peiqi Zhang
Tibetan populations have successfully settled in the Tibetan Plateau for generations. As the largest and highest highland in the world, with an average elevation of 4,000 meters above sea level (masl), the Tibetan Plateau is not only surrounded by mountains and alpine peaks but also with many selective pressures for humans to live permanently on this plateau. However, when and how Tibetan populations permanently occupied the region are still under debate. To address these questions, the occupation history and evolution of Tibetans is critical. Therefore, to understand the process of human adaptation to this harsh high-altitude environment, here, the study starts from the human occupation history since Middle Pleistocene to the Holocene, then to investigate the behavioral and biological adaptations in the high-altitude plateau.

Peiqi Zhang. PhD candidate at University of California Davis, whose research interest is the Paleolithic Archaeology and Paleoanthropology, specifically about the behaviors and dispersals of Homo sapiens in eastern Eurasia including areas of Siberia of Russia, Mongolia, and China. Her research focuses on the hunter-gatherer migrations along the Northern route of modern human dispersal, and their response to environmental pressures during the movements, as well as the high-altitude adaptations to the Tibetan Plateau. In
2018 and 2020 Peiqi received scholarships from Sacramento Archeological Society, Inc. to pursue her research.

SAS Webinar
Saturday, January 30, 2021
2:00 p.m.
Projectile point enlargement in the High Andean Archaic: an experimental atlatl study
by Caleb Chen

Archaic projectile points from the Andean Altiplano exhibit a curious trend of increasing size over time in contrast to a size reduction commonly observed throughout North America. We hypothesized that the increase compensated for decreasing dart momentum or accuracy resulting from shortening of atlatl parts as wood became increasingly scarce. Counter to expectation, our atlatl ballistic trials show that point enlargement significantly reduces penetration depth. However, we are unable to refute the accuracy hypothesis, leading us to suggest that Archaic point enlargement may have compensated for accuracy losses due to resource depletion on the Altiplano.

Caleb Chen is a graduate student at University of California Davis. He participated in the first U.C. Davis field school in the Andean Altiplano, Peru in 2019 and worked in the Forage Complexity Lab at U.C. Davis to replicated and experiment with an alpaca bone atlatl and atlatl darts to
assess projectile point trends in the Andes Mountains. Caleb also received a scholarship from Sacramento Archeological Society, Inc. in 2020.

SAS Webinar
Saturday, January 16, 2021
2:00 p.m.
‘Tocharians’
by Ranny Eckstrom

The Tocharians, or Tokharians were speakers of Tocharian languages, Indo-European languages known from around 7600 documents from around 400 to 1200 AD, found on the northern edge of the Tarim Basin (modern Xinjiang, China). The name “Tocharian” was given to these languages in the early 20th century by scholars who identified their speakers with a people known in ancient Greek sources as the Tókharoi (Latin Tochari), who inhabited Bactria from the 2nd century BC.

Ranny is an SAS member who leads “Big History” at California State University, Sacramento Renaissance Society and Sun City Lincoln Hills.