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- All Subjects: Archaeology
- All Subjects: Bioarchaeology
- Creators: Abbott, David R.
- Creators: Knudson, Kelly
Description
The causes and consequences of stylistic change have been a concern of archaeologists over the past several decades. The actual process of stylistic innovation, however, has received less attention. This project explores the relationship between the process of stylistic innovation on decorated pottery and the social context in which it occurred in the Hohokam area of south-central Arizona between A.D. 800 and 1300. This interval was punctuated by three episodes of reorganization, each of which was characterized to varying degrees by significant shifts in ideology, economics, and politics. Each reorganization episode was also accompanied by a rapid profusion of stylistic innovation on buff ware pottery. The goal of this study was to build a framework to understand the variation in the process of innovation as a response to different incentives and opportunities perceived in the changing social environment. By bringing stylistic analyses and provenance data together for the first time in Hohokam red-on-buff studies, I investigated how the process of innovation was variously influenced by social reorganizations at three different periods of time: the 9th, 11th, and 12th centuries A.D. Four variables were used to evaluate the process of innovation at each temporal period: 1) The origin of a stylistic invention, 2) the rate of its adoption, 3) the pattern of its adoption, and 4) the uniformity of its adoption among all buff ware potting communities. To accomplish the task, stylistic innovations and provenance were recorded on over 3,700 red-on-buff sherds were analyzed from 20 sites in the Phoenix Basin. The innovation process was found to vary with each reorganization episode, but often in different ways than expected. The results revealed the complexity and unpredictability of the process of stylistic innovation among the Hohokam. They also challenged some assumptions archaeologists have made regarding the scale and extent of the changes associated with some of the reorganization episodes. The variables utilized to measure the innovation process were found to be effective at providing a composite picture of that process, and thus warrant broader application to other archaeological contexts.
ContributorsLack, Andrew D (Author) / Abbott, David R. (Thesis advisor) / Hegmon, Michelle (Committee member) / Spielmann, Katherine A. (Committee member) / Nelson, Ben A. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
This project examines the social and economic factors that contributed to the development of a specialist-based economy among the Phoenix Basin Hohokam. In the Hohokam case, widespread dependence on the products of a few concentrated pottery producers developed in the absence of political centralization or hierarchical social arrangements. The factors that promoted intensified pottery production, therefore, are the keys to addressing how economic systems can expand in small-scale and middle-range societies. This dissertation constructs a multi-factor model that explores changes to the organization of decorated pottery production during a substantial portion of the pre-Classic period (AD 700 - AD 1020). The analysis is designed to examine simultaneously several variables that may have encouraged demand for ceramic vessels made by specialists. This study evaluates the role of four factors in the development of supply and demand for specialist produced red-on-buff pottery in Hohokam settlements. The factors include 1) agricultural intensification in the form of irrigation agriculture, 2) increases in population density, 3) ritual or social obligations that require the production of particular craft items, and 4) reduced transport costs. Supply and demand for specialist-produced pottery is estimated through a sourcing analysis of non-local pottery at 13 Phoenix Basin settlements. Through a series of statistical analyses, the study measures changes in the influence of each factor on demand for specialist-produced pottery through four temporal phases of the Hohokam pre-Classic period. The analysis results indicate that specialized red-on-buff production was initially spurred by demand for light-colored, shiny, decorated pottery, but then by comparative advantages to specialized production in particular areas of the Phoenix Basin. Specialists concentrated on the Snaketown canal system were able to generate light-colored, mica-dense wares that Phoenix Basin consumers desired while lowering transport costs in the distribution of red-on-buff pottery. The circulation of decorated wares was accompanied by the production of plainware pottery in other areas of the Phoenix Basin. Economic growth in the region was based on complementary and coordinated economic activities between the Salt and the Gila River valleys.
ContributorsKelly, Sophia E (Author) / Abbott, David R. (Thesis advisor) / Darling, J. Andrew (Committee member) / Moore, Gordon (Committee member) / Spielmann, Katherine A. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
The Hohokam of central Arizona left behind evidence of a culture markedly different from and more complex than the small communities of O'odham farmers first encountered by Europeans in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries A.D. Archaeologists have worked for well over a century to document Hohokam culture history, but much about Pre-Columbian life in the Sonoran Desert remains poorly understood. In particular, the organization of the Hohokam economy in the Phoenix Basin has been an elusive and complicated subject, despite having been the focus of much previous research. This dissertation provides an assessment of several working hypotheses regarding the organization and evolution of the pottery distribution sector of the Hohokam economy. This was accomplished using an agent-based modeling methodology known as pattern-oriented modeling. The objective of the research was to first identify a variety of economic models that may explain patterns of artifact distribution in the archaeological record. Those models were abstract representations of the real-world system theoretically drawn from different sources, including microeconomics, mathematics (network/graph theory), and economic anthropology. Next, the effort was turned toward implementing those hypotheses as agent-based models, and finally assessing whether or not any of the models were consistent with Hohokam ceramic datasets. The project's pattern-oriented modeling methodology led to the discard of several hypotheses, narrowing the range of plausible models of the organization of the Hohokam economy. The results suggest that for much of the Hohokam sequence a market-based system, perhaps structured around workshop procurement and shopkeeper merchandise, provided the means of distributing pottery from specialist producers to widely distributed consumers. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the results of this project are broadly consistent with earlier researchers' interpretations that the structure of the Hohokam economy evolved through time, growing more complex throughout the Preclassic, and undergoing a major reorganization resulting in a less complicated system at the transition to the Classic Period.
ContributorsWatts, Joshua (Author) / Abbott, David R. (Thesis advisor) / Barton, C Michael (Committee member) / Van Der Leeuw, Sander (Committee member) / Janssen, Marcus (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
Understanding agricultural land use requires the integration of natural factors, such as climate and nutrients, as well as human factors, such as agricultural intensification. Employing an agroecological framework, I use the Perry Mesa landscape, located in central Arizona, as a case study to explore the intersection of these factors to investigate prehistoric agriculture from A.D. 1275-1450. Ancient Perry Mesa farmers used a runoff agricultural strategy and constructed extensive alignments, or terraces, on gentle hillslopes to slow and capture nutrient rich surface runoff generated from intense rainfall. I investigate how the construction of agricultural terraces altered key parameters (water and nutrients) necessary for successful agriculture in this arid region. Building upon past work focused on agricultural terraces in general, I gathered empirical data pertaining to nutrient renewal and water retention from one ancient runoff field. I developed a long-term model of maize growth and soil nutrient dynamics parameterized using nutrient analyses of runoff collected from the sample prehistoric field. This model resulted in an estimate of ideal field use and fallow periods for maintaining long-term soil fertility under different climatic regimes. The results of the model were integrated with estimates of prehistoric population distribution and geographical characterizations of the arable lands to evaluate the places and periods when sufficient arable land was available for the type of cropping and fallowing systems suggested by the model (given the known climatic trends and land use requirements). Results indicate that not only do dry climatic periods put stress on crops due to reduced precipitation but that a reduction in expected runoff events results in a reduction in the amount of nutrient renewal due to fewer runoff events. This reduction lengthens estimated fallow cycles, and probably would have increased the amount of land necessary to maintain sustainable agricultural production. While the overall Perry Mesa area was not limited in terms of arable land, this analysis demonstrates the likely presence of arable land pressures in the immediate vicinity of some communities. Anthropological understandings of agricultural land use combined with ecological tools for investigating nutrient dynamics provides a comprehensive understanding of ancient land use in arid regions.
ContributorsKruse-Peeples, Melissa R (Author) / Spielmann, Katherine A. (Thesis advisor) / Abbott, David R. (Committee member) / Hall, Sharon J. (Committee member) / Kintigh, Keith W. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
This research explores how people's relationships with the spirits of the dead are embedded in political histories. It addresses the ways in which certain spirits were integral "inhabitants" of two social environments with disparate political traditions. Using the prehistoric mortuary record, I investigate the spirits and their involvement in socio-political affairs in the Prehispanic American Southeast and Southwest. Foremost, I construct a framework to characterize particular social identities for the spirits. Ancestors are select, potent beings who are capable of wielding considerable agency. Ancestral spirits are generic beings who are infrequently active among the living and who can exercise agency only in specific contexts. Anonymous groups of spirits are collectives who exercise little to no agency. I then examine the performance of mortuary ritual to recognize these social identities in the archaeological record. Multivariate analyses evaluate how particular ritual actions memorialized the dead. They concentrate on treatment of the body, construction of burial features, inclusion of material accompaniments, and the spaces of ritual action. Each analysis characterizes the social memories that ritual acts shaped for the spirits. When possible, I supplement analysis of archaeological data with ethnohistoric and ethnographic information. Finally, I compile the memories to describe the social identities for the spirits of the dead. In this study, I examine the identities surrounding the spirits in both a Mississippian period settlement on the Georgia coast and in several Protohistoric era Zuni towns in the northern Southwest. Results indicate that ancestors were powerful members of political factions in coastal Mississippian communities. In contrast, ancestral spirits and collectives of long-dead were custodians of group histories in Zuni communities. I contend that these different spirits were rooted in political traditions of competition. Mississippian ancestors were influential agents on cultural landscapes filled with contestation over social power. Puebloan ancestral spirits were keepers of histories on landscapes where power relations were masked, and where new kinds of communities were coalescing. This study demonstrates that the spirits of the dead are important to anthropological understandings of socio-political trajectories. The spirits are at the heart of the ways in which history influences and determines politics.
ContributorsThompson, M. Scott (Author) / Buikstra, Jane E. (Thesis advisor) / Kintigh, Keith W. (Committee member) / Abbott, David R. (Committee member) / Goldstein, Lynne G (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
Studies of ancient pathogens are moving beyond simple confirmatory analysis of diseased bone; bioarchaeologists and ancient geneticists are posing nuanced questions and utilizing novel methods capable of confronting the debates surrounding pathogen origins and evolution, and the relationships between humans and disease in the past. This dissertation examines two ancient human diseases through molecular and bioarchaeological lines of evidence, relying on techniques in paleogenetics and phylogenetics to detect, isolate, sequence and analyze ancient and modern pathogen DNA within an evolutionary framework. Specifically this research addresses outstanding issues regarding a) the evolution, origin and phylogenetic placement of the pathogen causing skeletal tuberculosis in New World prior to European contact, and b) the phylogeny and origins of the parasite causing the human leishmaniasis disease complex. An additional chapter presents a review of the major technological and theoretical advances in ancient pathogen genomics to frame the contributions of this work within a rapidly developing field. This overview emphasizes that understanding the evolution of human disease is critical to contextualizing relationships between humans and pathogens, and the epidemiological shifts observed both in the past and in the present era of (re)emerging infectious diseases. These questions continue to be at the forefront of not only pathogen research, but also
bioarchaeological and paleopathological scholarship.
bioarchaeological and paleopathological scholarship.
ContributorsHarkins, Kelly M (Author) / Buikstra, Jane E. (Thesis advisor) / Stone, Anne C (Thesis advisor) / Knudson, Kelly (Committee member) / Kumar, Sudhir (Committee member) / Krause, Johannes (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
This study evaluates five different hypotheses potentially accounting for the prehistoric movement of vesicular basalt during the Hohokam occupation of the Salt-Gila Basin (ca. A.D. 700-1450): 1) direct procurement; 2) direct exchange; 3) down-the-line exchange; 4) market exchange; and 5) elite-controlled exchange. The plausibility of each hypothesis is assessed by examining the relative frequency of different vesicular basalt source types at sites as related to the geographic distance from their source; intra-site variance in vesicular basalt source type diversity; inter-site variance in vesicular basalt source type diversity; and temporal specificity and continuity in source preference. The study sample is comprised of 484 vesicular basalt artifacts recovered from nine Hohokam sites: Casa Grande, Gila Crossing, the Hospital Site, La Plaza, Las Colinas, Los Hornos, Lower Santan, Pueblo Grande, and Upper Santan. Geographic provenance data for artifacts are generated by comparing their chemical composition to a geochemical reference database composed of more than 700 vesicular basalt raw material samples from 17 different source areas in the Salt-Gila Basin. Geochemical data for both artifact and raw material samples were collected using a portable X-ray fluorescence spectrometer and a newly developed sampling procedure that provides an efficient, reliable, and nondestructive means of analysis.
The results of the hypothesis testing found that direct procurement is a possible material provisioning practice for perhaps only a small number of households in the Salt-Gila Basin; specifically those located less than 10 km from a vesicular basalt outcrop. Direct exchange is also an unlikely explanation, though it cannot be rejected outright. The other exchange hypotheses, down-the-line, market, and elite-controlled exchange, as defined in this study, are all rejected as possible explanations. From these results, a new model of Hohokam vesicular basalt provisioning practices is developed for future testing. This model posits that vesicular basalt groundstone tools were produced by specialists in a handful of locations during both the Preclassic and Classic periods, and that finished tools were acquired through workshop procurement or local distributers. The implications of these findings for understanding the organization of Hohokam domestic and political economies are also discussed.
The results of the hypothesis testing found that direct procurement is a possible material provisioning practice for perhaps only a small number of households in the Salt-Gila Basin; specifically those located less than 10 km from a vesicular basalt outcrop. Direct exchange is also an unlikely explanation, though it cannot be rejected outright. The other exchange hypotheses, down-the-line, market, and elite-controlled exchange, as defined in this study, are all rejected as possible explanations. From these results, a new model of Hohokam vesicular basalt provisioning practices is developed for future testing. This model posits that vesicular basalt groundstone tools were produced by specialists in a handful of locations during both the Preclassic and Classic periods, and that finished tools were acquired through workshop procurement or local distributers. The implications of these findings for understanding the organization of Hohokam domestic and political economies are also discussed.
ContributorsFertelmes, Craig M (Author) / Abbott, David R. (Thesis advisor) / Simon, Arleyn W (Thesis advisor) / Darling, J Andrew (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
Mobility is an important aspect of the lives of religious individuals described by medieval texts in early and late medieval Ireland, and biogeochemical methods can be used to detect mobility in archaeological populations. Stories are recorded of monks and nuns traveling and founding monasteries across Ireland, Scotland, England, Wales, and other areas of Europe. However, these texts rarely address the quotidian lives of average monks and nuns who lived in monastic communities. This dissertation seeks to understand if travel was a typical part of the experiences of religious and lay people in early and late medieval Ireland. It also aims to increase understanding of how monastic communities related to the local lay communities, including addressing if the monastery was populated by those who grew up in the local area. Another methodological aim of this dissertation is to advance the field of archaeological biogeochemistry by (1) adding to the bioavailable strontium baseline in Ireland and (2) quantifying the contribution of ocean-derived strontium to coastal environments. These topics are explored through the biogeochemical analysis of 88 individuals buried at 5 early and late medieval monasteries in Ireland and the analysis of a total of 85 plant samples from four counties in Ireland. The three papers in this dissertation present: (1) a summary of the mobility of religious and lay people buried at the monasteries (Chapter 2), (2) a case study presenting evidence for fosterage of a local child at the early medieval monastery of Illaunloughan, Co. Kerry (Chapter 3), and (3) a study designed to quantify the impact of sea spray on bioavailable strontium in coastal environments (Chapter 4). The majority of lay and religious individuals studied were estimated to be local, indicating that medieval Irish Christianity was strongly rooted in the local community. The study of ocean-derived strontium in a coastal environment indicates that sea spray has a non-uniform impact on bioavailable strontium in coastal regions. These findings shed new light on medieval monastic and lay life in Ireland through the application of biogeochemical methods, contributing to the growth of the field of archaeological chemistry in Ireland.
ContributorsAlonzi, Elise (Author) / Knudson, Kelly (Thesis advisor) / Hegmon, Michelle (Committee member) / Scott, Rachel (Committee member) / Stojanowski, Christopher (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018
Description
Accurately predicting local ranges of isotopic signatures in human populations is essential for answering questions about past migrations and mobility. While local ranges of δ18O can be estimated using modern baseline samples and precipitation models, there are many environmental and anthropogenic drivers that can cause these ranges to deviate from the ranges seen in human populations. This study performs a geostatistical meta-analysis on a large dataset (n = 1,370) of spatially contextualized archaeological δ18O samples from 30 publications in order to generate a predictive model of local human δ18O ranges in the Central Andes. Two models were generated, one using archaeological samples of both humans and fauna, and the other using only humans. The model using only human samples makes more accurate predictions, cautioning against the incorporation of faunal δ18O samples in studies of human provenance. The models are also compared against a model of δ18O values found in precipitation across the study area, and significant differences lead to the conclusion that precipitation models are insufficient for predicting local human δ18O ranges.
ContributorsHatley, Camden Miller (Author) / Knudson, Kelly (Thesis director) / Scaffidi, Beth (Committee member) / School of Earth and Space Exploration (Contributor) / School of Human Evolution & Social Change (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2020-05
Description
Isotopic analyses of archaeological and modern materials are commonly used to reconstruct diet, climate, and habitat. This study analyzes 15 camelid samples from three sites (two archaeological, one modern) in South America to determine their carbon and nitrogen isotopic values to further explore the relationship between stable isotopes and environments. Camelid individuals in the modern site of Cuenca, Ecuador had a diet of almost entirely C3 vegetation, while those in Chen Chen, Peru had slightly higher values, still consistent with C3 plants. Those in the higher altitude site of Pumapunku, Bolivia had higher δ13C values than expected, indicating they may have been foddered with a mixed diet. These isotopic data indicate that vegetation, and therefore herbivore diets, are influenced by altitude. Additionally, it was found that a positive linear relationship exists between δ15N values and aridity of a site. Results indicate that aspects of the environment such as aridity are reflected in isotopic signatures. These results contribute to the increasing amount of data on isotopic variation in South American camelids, both modern and archaeological.
ContributorsSpencer, Katherine Clare (Author) / Knudson, Kelly (Thesis director) / Reed, Kaye (Committee member) / School of Human Evolution and Social Change (Contributor) / School of Molecular Sciences (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05