Category Archives: Seminars

Annual Meeting Featuring Neandertal Research and Carbonized Wood Identification

Sacramento Archeological Society, Inc.’s Annual Meeting

Featuring

“Current Neandertal Research and Identification of Carbonized Wood Remains”

By University of California Scholars

Saturday, December 3, 2016

12:00 – 6:00 p.m.

 

At our annual meeting we are pleased to have four University of California Scholars who received SAS scholarships present their research, field work, and training. Naomi Martisius, Susan E. Lagle and Samantha Dunham have been studying Neandertals in Europe. Each will speak on their research and experiences. Mallory Melton is analyzing the La Blanca wood assemblage.  She will speak on her training in taxonomic identification of carbonized wood remains that she received at the Boston University’s Wood Identification Workshop.

Paleo-Indians in California

Saturday, October 15, 2016

10:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.

Hosted by Maidu Museum & Historical Site

1970 Johnson Ranch Drive, Roseville, CA 95661

Archaeologists present viewpoints on Paleo-Indians (the first people who entered and inhabited the Americans) with a focus on recent research, important sites and artifacts in California.

Program

10:00 a.m. Tour of Maidu Rock Art – Dan Foster

11:00 a.m. – Paleo-Indian Introduction – John Foster, “SAS Texas & Oregon Tour Insights.

11:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. – Lunch break (Bring you own lunch or get lunch in the area an enjoy museum)

1:00 to 1:45 p.m. – Gerrit Fenenga, “Witt Site–Tulare Lake”

1:45 to 2:30 p.m. – Rick Fitzgerald, “Paleo-Coastal Tradition: Real or Imagined 30 years later”

2:30 to 2:45 p.m. – Break

2:45 to 3:30 p.m. – Greg White, “Borax Lake & Northern Sites”

3:30 to 4:00 p.m. – Closing

Open to the Public –Donations welcome

For more information contact Ruth McElhinney at 916-396-4945

 

Eclectic Archaeological Exchange: Mysteries of Ancient Orkey and Great Britain on June 19, 2016

Eclectic Archeological Exchange

June 19, 2016, Sunday

1:00 – 5:00 p.m.

In August, 2015 several members of Sacramento Archeological Society, Inc. joined members of the Council for British Archaeology for an archaeological tour of the Scottish Orkney.  Orkney has world famous Neolithic villages of Skara Brae and Ness of Brodgar which is currently being excavated, Maeshowe chambered tomb and amazing henge monuments of Brodgar and Stennes – all part of our World Heritage Site.  After the Orkney tour the travelers continued to visit archeological sites in Scotland, England and Ireland.

Program:

Jan Johansen, SAS Board Member will share Orkney photos and stories in the presentation “Mysteries of Ancient Orkney”.

Paul K. Davis, SAS Board Member will present “Archeological Sites in Great Britain”, tidbits from his visit to other archeological/anthropological sites in the Great Britain following the Orkney tour.

An informal discussion will follow including comments from additional Orkney tour participants: Jeremy Johansen, Tom Johansen, Ruth McElhinney, and Knuti VanHoven.

 

 

Our Neandertal Heritage on April 24, 2016

Our Neandertal Heritage

By

Teresa Steele, PhD Anthropology at University of California, Davis

and Tim Weaver, PhD Anthropology at University of California, Davis

 

Sunday, April 24, 2016

2:00 – 5:00 p.m.

at

Yolo County Library, Arthur F. Turner Branch

1212 Merkley Avenue,

West Sacramento, CA 95691

 

Agenda

2:00 Teresa Steele, PhD, “Varsche Rivier 003 (South Africa): recent investigations into behavioral variation during the Middle Stone Age and implication for modern human origins”

3:00 Tim Weaver, PhD, “The Role of History and Chance in Human Evolution”

 

Teresa Steele, PhD Anthropology UCD – work on the later phases of human evolution – the emergence of the earliest people who were behaviorally and anatomically modern. In particular, why these fully modern humans spread out of Africa about 50,000 years ago and were able to replace the Neandertals in Europe.

Tim Weaver PhD Anthropology UCD – work on human evolution, with a focus on the emergence, evolution, and disappearance of Neandertals, and the related question of the origins of humans who were anatomically and behaviorally modern and especially the recent finds in South Africa

Scholar Symposium on 1/17/2016

Annual Scholar Symposium

By

Scholarship Recipients

Sunday, January 17, 2016

1:00 – 5:00 p.m.

at

Yolo County Library, Arthur F. Turner Branch

1212 Merkley Avenue,

West Sacramento, CA 95691

 

Agenda

1:00 Allison Blair – “Imprisoned in Ireland”

1:40 Leah Hansard – “The Poggio Civitate Archaeological Project 2015 Field Season”

2:20 Rachel Davies – “Rimrock Draw Rockshelter in Oregon – Older than Clovis Excavation”

3:00 Break

3:10 Derek A. Boyd – ““Anthropology Abroad: Osteological Investigations of Two Historic Cemeteries Housed at the Museum of London, Centre for Human Bioarchaeology”

3:50 Julia Prince-Buitenhuys – “Insights into Dietary Ethnogenesis at the Santa Clara County Medical Center Potter’s Field”

4:30 Wrap up and prep for a 5:00 close of facility

  • Allison Blair is a senior at University of Nevada, Reno majoring in Anthropology and English.  Her career goal is to become a National Park Ranger.  To expand her experience she attended the Spike Island Field School in Cobh, Ireland during the 2015 summer.  The island housed a prison from the 1800’s.  The school continued to search for missing convict burial grounds excavate of a walled cemetery and the site of the Wooden Prison, a temporary prison building.  This project was intended to provide insights into Ireland’s prison system.
  • Derek A. Boyd is a graduate student at California State University, Chico majoring in Anthropology. During the summer of 2015 Derek spent a month in London collecting data for his master’s theses. He analyzed patterns of trauma on human skeletal remains from two socio-economically disparate post-Medieval communities. At the Royal College of Surgeons in London he searched through historical documentation of pathology reports, patient records, and other miscellaneous items to gain an understanding of how trauma was treated in the post-Medieval period. In this presentation he plans to share with the Sacramento Archaeological Society his experiences as an independent researcher in London, as well as the preliminary results of his Master’s thesis research.
  • Rachel Davies graduated from California State University Sacramento.  Her interest is in great basin Zooarchaeology.  During 2015 summer she participated in the Rimrock Draw Rockshelter field school.  Excavations from this site have produced findings that suggest Western North America may have been occupied by pre-Clovis people as early as 16,000 B.P. This last summer excavation began in the 7,600 old Mazama volcanic ash layer and worked down.  We will be excited to hear of the findings.

 

  • Leah Hansard completed a Post-Baccalaureate Certificate in Classics at the University of California, Davis in the spring of 2015 and is now a first year graduate student in Art History at the University of Texas, Austin.  She would like to become a curator of classical art and archaeology and lead excavations in the Mediterranean.  As a second year participant at the Poggio Civitate Archaeological Project in Italy, she worked as a Trench Master-in-Training and deepen her archaeological skills.  We will be interested to hear about the excavation.

 

  • Julia Prince-Buitenhuys is a graduate student at California State University Chico majoring in anthropology.   She was studying the migration and acculturation that occurred in Santa Clara Valley between 1870 and 1935 by performing stable isotope analysis on a sample population from the Santa Clara County Valley Medical Center Potter’s Field.  This analysis provides insights into dietary practices and the general immigration status of those interred at the cemetery.  We are very interested to hear her assessment of the ethnogenesis process for this region in this period of time.

Annual Meeting – Cory Wilkins “The Archaeological Conservancy” on 12/5/2015

Sacramento Archeological Society, Inc.’s

 Annual Meeting

Featuring

“The Archaeological Conservancy in CA”

By

Cory Wilkins

Western Regional Director

The Archaeological Conservancy

Saturday, December 5, 2015

2:00 – 6:00 p.m.

At our annual meeting we are pleased to have Cory Wilkins, Western Regional Director of The Archaeological Conservancy (TAC) speak on

(1)   General descriptions of all properties TAC currently owns in California and Nevada

(2)   A detailed discussion of TAC’s most recent purchase, the Siemer Preserve on the edge of Big Valley and near Bieber, announced in TAC’s attached Fall 2015 American Archaeology magazine at pages 48-9 by Deanna Commons.

(3)   Other properties in California and Nevada that TAC is currently considering purchasing.

The agenda for the event is as follows:

2:00 – Social hour.

3:00 – SAS Annual Meeting

3:30 – Presentation

4:30 – Dinner, socializing, and raffle

 

PLEASE provide your RSVP by December 1 to Carolyn at  sabrina53@earthlink.net.

Talking Stone and Sacred Stories on 11/7/2015

Sacramento Archeological Society, Inc.

Co-sponsored by the Mythological RoundTable® Group of Sacramento,
a chapter of the Joseph Campbell Foundation

Presents

TALKING STONE AND SACRED STORIES

Saturday, November 7, 2015

10:00 -11:30 a.m. and 1:00 – 3:00 p.m.

Hosted by Maidu Museum & Historical Site

1970 Johnson Ranch Drive, Roseville, California 95661
OPEN TO THE PUBLIC – SUGGESTED DONATION $5

 

Program

10:00 a.m. – Tour of Maidu Rock Art

11:00 – Screening: A WALK THROUGH TIME: A STORY OF ANDERSON MARSH

11:30 to 1:00 – Lunch break (Bring your own lunch or get lunch in the area and enjoy museum)

1:00 p.m. – Screening:  TALKING STONE: ROCK ART OF THE COSOS

2:00 – Guest Speaker Lecture with Dr. Alan Garfinkel Gold: “Stone Age Metaphors:  Sacred Stories and Symbolic Songs of the Immortal Bighorn”

 

For more information view our event flier.

Eclectic Archeological Exchange – “Hittites” on 3/21/15

Eclectic Archeological Exchange

Saturday, March 21, 2015

1:00 to 4:30 p.m.

 Paul K. Davis

Sacramento Archeological Society, Inc. member

“Hittites”

From about four thousand years ago until about three thousand years ago,
peoples and nations called “Hittite” were a major force in the Middle East, based in what is now Turkey, extending into northern Syria, with
interactions from Iraq to Greece and Egypt.  When the first Hittite kingdom was founded, only the Egyptians, Mesopotamians, and Indus people had writing systems.  The Hittites were next to learn to write.  By the end of the last Hittite kingdom, the Chinese, Phoenicians, Greeks, Olmec and Maya could.  We only learned much of the Hittites in the last century and a half.  Thanks to archaeology our knowledge is still growing.  The Hittites made significant contributions to ancient civilizations, such as how to smelt iron and how to train horses, and their influence affected many later civilizations including our own.

 

2015 Scholar Symposium on 1/18/15

Annual Scholar Symposium
By
2014 Scholarship Recipients
Kasey Cole
Jesica Jayd Lewis
Heather MacInnies
Sunday, January 18, 2015
1:00 – 5:00 p.m.
at
Yolo County Library, Arthur F. Turner Branch
1212 Merkley Avenue,
West Sacramento, CA 95691

In 2014 Sacramento Archeological Society awarded six scholarships to support archeological/anthropological education. Antonietta Catanzariti was unable to use the award in 2014. If conditions in Iraq improve, she hopes to use it in 2015. Julia Prince’s the stable isotope analysis of a sample population from the Santa Clara County Valley Medical Center Cemetery for her thesis has been delayed; hence she will be presenting later in 2015 after the analysis is complete.

Three of the recipients will be speaking on the experiences made possible by the scholarships.

• Kasey Cole is a graduate student at California State University, Chico majoring in Anthropology. She intends to work in the field of Zooarchaeology. To strengthen her research and communication skills she attended the Zooarchaeology and Field Ecology Field School organized by Jack Broughton, Ph.D. from the University of Utah. This field school was an intensive four-week course located at Eagle Lake in Northern California.

• Jesica Jayd Lewis is a graduate student at North Carolina State University (NVSU) majoring in Ancient History with a minor in Classical Archaeology. Her goal is to earn a Ph.D. and teach and research history and archaeology professionally. This year Jesica participated in the Palatine East Potter Project (PEPP; Rome, Italy) and the Najerilla Valley Research Project (NVRP; Camprovin, Spain). Both projects will contribute to her research for her Master’s thesis on cycles of economic complexity in marginal spaces of the Roman Empire.

• Heather Macinnes is a graduate student at California State University, Chico majoring in Anthropology. She plans to work as a professor of bioarchaeology and consult on forensic anthropology cases. She attended the Aditu Servicios Arquelogicos Mortuary Archaeology Field School in Uharte-Arakil, Navarre, Spain. This field school was involved with the excavation of a 12th century Romanesque church that was built on an earlier Roman Mansion. The main objective of the project was to lean about the medieval population of Navarre through the assessment of skeletal indicators of diet, pathology, and biological profile (age, sex, ancestry and stature).