scholarly journals A Update of Archaeological Investigations at the Tyson Site (41SY92)

1994 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tom Middlebrook
Keyword(s):  
Political Organization ◽  
Integrative Model ◽  
East Texas ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Intergroup Interactions ◽  
Archaeological Data ◽  
15Th Century ◽  
Political Ritual ◽  
Constituent Group ◽  
Archaeological Work

In recent years, much of the research concerning prehistoric and historic Caddoan lifeways has focused on socio-political organization and community structure. Models have been proposed to predict the character of the archaeological record based on European observations of Caddo an life during the 17th-19th centuries. A brief review of these models is warranted to provide the necessary background for interpreting the results of recent archaeological work at an interesting 15th century site in Deep East Texas. Story and Creel have developed an integrative model to describe Hasinai Caddo "settlement patterns, socio-political organization, and intergroup interactions" based on ethnographic and archaeological data. The smallest component within their model was the layout of individual hamlets, with these being integrated into communities (as exemplified by the Deshazo Site). A number of these individual settlements --along with short-term use sites, community cemeteries, and a lesser political/ritual center (e.g., the residence of the caddi or village headman)-- reflected a "constituent group" in the next level of group organization.

The Rhodesian Front and the African National Council

1980 ◽  
Vol 10 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 32-41
Author(s):  
Tony Kirk
Keyword(s):  
Political Life ◽  
Political Organization ◽  
Executive Power ◽  
National Council ◽  
Ordinary People ◽  
Bad Faith ◽  
Political Leaders ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Flexible Response ◽  
The Government

In most countries ordinary people do not appreciate the sheer guile of their political leaders. Rhodesia is no exception. The dealings between the government and the African National Council confirm it. The government interrupted its dialogue with the ANC by detaining thirty-three senior ANC officials without trial, effectively destroying the cohesion of the only black political organization in the country. To the white voter, who sees no further than the surface of events, the detentions represented a simple exercise of executive power. In fact the government could not act in as sudden and arbitrary a fashion as that. It had to choose the time for its action with care, and to some extent it had to prepare the white electorate to accept what happened without question. The government also had to conceal its true intentions from the ANC without resorting to outright falsehood. Finally, it had to leave itself free to make a flexible response to the sort of unpredictable events which inevitably occur in political life and which often wreck the most carefully drafted plans. Formulating a policy to meet these contradictory objectives without giving the appearance of bad faith required much guile. The outcome, in the short term at least, was success.

scholarly journals Documentation of Caddo Ceramic Vessel Sherds from the Shelby Site (41CP71) in the Vernon Holcomb Collection, Camp County, Texas

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy K. Perttula
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
15Th Century ◽  
Animal Remains ◽  
Archaeological Work ◽  
History Of ◽  
Ceramic Vessels ◽  
Building Activities ◽  
Political Communities ◽  
Almost All ◽  
Work Done

The Shelby site (41CP71) is an important Late Caddo period, Titus phase, religious and political center on Greasy Creek in the Northeast Texas Pineywoods. The site, occupied from the 15th century A.D. until at least the late 17th century A.D., is a large and well-preserved settlement with abundant habitation features as well as plant and animal remains, evidence of mound building activities in the form of a 1.5 m high structural mound, and a large community cemetery with at least 119 burial pits and perhaps as many as 200. The Shelby site is the nexus of one of a number of Titus phase political communities in the Big Cypress Creek stream basin. Nevertheless, very little is known archaeologically about the site—or the history of the Caddo’s settlement there—since almost all the work done at the site since it was discovered in 1979 has been by looters. Perttula and Nelson completed a limited amount of work in the village area in 2003, and Bob Turner and others worked in the 1.5 m high structural mound between 1985-1988, but an overall synthesis of the Caddo occupation at the Shelby site awaits more extensive professional archaeological investigations. One key step in any professional archaeological work that may be forthcoming at the site includes the documentation of Caddo material culture remains, especially Caddo ceramics, that are known to have come from the site, as they provide a record of the temporal, functional, and stylistic range of the ceramic vessels used and discarded at the site, as well as evidence of interaction and contact between different but contemporaneous Caddo groups. In August 2009, I had an opportunity to document a collection of Caddo ceramic sherds held by Vernon Holcomb from the Shelby site. He collected these sherds from the surface of the site some 25-30 years ago where they had been eroded out of the banks of a dry or intermittent stream branch that drains north to Greasy Creek.

Evidence and Metaphor in Evolutionary Archaeology

2002 ◽  
Vol 67 (3) ◽  
pp. 435-452 ◽  
Author(s):  
Douglas B. Bamforth
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Conceptual Framework ◽  
Evolutionary Theory ◽  
Optimal Foraging ◽  
Optimal Foraging Theory ◽  
Foraging Theory ◽  
Darwinian Evolution ◽  
Evolutionary Archaeology ◽  
Archaeological Data ◽  
Archaeological Work

Evolutionary theory and terminology are widely used in recent archaeological work, and many evolutionary archaeologists have argued that the integration of such theory and terminology is essential to the future of our field. This paper considers evolutionary archaeology from two perspectives. First, it examines substantive claims that archaeology can study the operation of Darwinian evolution, either through a reliance on optimal-foraging theory or by linking the process of natural selection to archaeological data. It concludes that there are serious problems with both of these claims on Darwin: the relation between evolution and foraging theory has never been documented, and midrange arguments linking selection and archaeological data are unsustainable. Second, it argues that archaeologists rely metaphorically on evolutionary terminology to help make sense out of archaeological data. Although the use of evolutionary metaphor can be, and has been, problematic, it also offers a powerful conceptual framework for our research. However, this framework is only of one of a number of comparable frameworks that have been offered to our field, as a comparison of systems archaeology and evolutionary archaeology shows.

scholarly journals CASTLE4D: AN ARCHAEOLOGICAL INFORMATION SYSTEM BASED ON 3D POINT CLOUDS

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Luczfalvy Jancsó ◽  
Benoît Jonlet ◽  
Pierre Hallot ◽  
Florent Poux ◽  
Patrick Hoffsummer ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Information System ◽  
3D Visualization ◽  
Three Dimensional ◽  
Point Clouds ◽  
Archaeological Research ◽  
Three Dimensional Model ◽  
Archaeological Data ◽  
3D Point Clouds ◽  
Two Factors ◽  
Archaeological Work

During the past decade, the implementation of 3D visualization and Geographic Information System (GIS) in archaeological research has increased and is now well established. However, the combination of these two factors remains rather complicated when faced with archaeological data. Some of the characteristics of this discipline impose the development of applications that will be able to cope with all of the specificities of archaeological data. Our research aims to create an Archaeological Information System (AIS) that will gather all of the characteristics of an archaeological work. In order to develop such an AIS, our first step was to identify its purposes and consequently, the features that should be available to the users. As it is destined to help with archaeological research, it is therefore of the outmost importance that the particularities of such a study are also taken into account. Moreover, the AIS is intended to incorporate point clouds that serve as a base for the three-dimensional model. These 3D point clouds result from the use of photogrammetry and/or lasergrammetry and, at a later stage, will be inserted into a GIS similar structure. The archaeological data will then be linked to the relevant section of the 3D model. However, these various stages and during the development of the AIS itself, we will encounter a series of issues that require to be addressed in order to produce a working system. This paper aims to identify and define the AIS characteristics as well as the issues and obstacles that we are going to face so that this system becomes a functional tool for archaeological research.

scholarly journals Additional Artifact Collections from the Gardener Site (41CP55), Camp County, Texas

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy K. Perttula ◽  
Bo Nelson
Keyword(s):  
Oak Savanna ◽  
East Texas ◽  
The West ◽  
West Side ◽  
Post Oak ◽  
Drought Conditions ◽  
Archaeological Materials ◽  
Archaeological Work ◽  
Post Oak Savanna

The Gardener site (41CP55) was first recorded by Sullivan (1977) prior to construction of Lake Bob Sandlin on Big Cypress Creek. A surface collection of sherds and daub suggested that the site was the locus of a Late Caddo period (ca. A.D. 1450-1680) settlement and burned house. However, no further archaeological work was done at the site before it was inundated by Lake Bob Sandlin in the late 1970s. Recently, because of lower flood pool levels (about 9 ft. below normal flood pool) at Lake Bob Sandlin due to East Texas drought conditions, archaeological materials from the Gardener site have been exposed along the shoreline of the lake. Perttula documented a substantial aboriginal artifact assemblage collected from the shoreline surface of the site, and this article documents a second collection of artifacts from the Gardener site. The Gardener site, whose overall extent is not known, is located along an upland slope (330 ft. amsl) on the west side of Picket Spring Branch, a small and northward-flowing tributary to Big Cypress Creek, in the Post Oak Savanna. The old channel of Big Cypress Creek lies approximately 1.8 km north of the site.

scholarly journals Bridging Legends and Science: Field Evidence of a Large Tsunami that Affected the Kingdom of Tonga in the 15th Century

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Franck Lavigne ◽  
Julie Morin ◽  
Patrick Wassmer ◽  
Olivier Weller ◽  
Taaniela Kula ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Colonial History ◽  
Central Pacific ◽  
Cultural Changes ◽  
Science Field ◽  
Archaeological Data ◽  
15Th Century ◽  
Field Evidence ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
Neighbouring Island ◽  
Large Tsunami

The pre-colonial history (i.e. before the 16th century) of Tonga and West Polynesia still suffers from major gaps despite significant scientific advances in recent years, particularly in the field of archaeology. By the 14th century, the powerful Tu’i Tonga kingdom united the islands of the Tongan archipelago under a centralised authority and, according to tradition, extended its influence to neighbouring island groups in the Central Pacific. However, some periods of deep crisis were identified, e.g. in the mid- 15th century, marked by an abrupt cessation of inter-archipelago migration on the deep seas in the Pacific, significant cultural changes, and a decrease in accessible natural resources. The origins of these disturbances are still debated, and they are usually assigned to internal political problems or loss of external influence vis-à-vis neighboring chiefdoms. However, the hypothesis of a major natural disaster was rarely suggested up to now, while field evidence points to the occurrence of a very large tsunami in the past, including the presence of numerous megablocks that were deposited by a “red wave” (or peau kula, which also mean tsunami in the Tongan language) according to a local myth. Drawing on a body of new evidence from sedimentary signatures and radiocarbon dating of charcoal and marine bioclasts, geomorphology, and sedimentology, in support of previously published archaeological data, we argue that a large tsunami inundated large areas of Tongatapu island in the mid-15th century with runup heights up to 30 m, and that the Tu’i Tonga kingdom was severely impacted by this event. We also discuss the likely sources of this tsunami.

E Groups and the Rise of Complexity in the Southeastern Maya Lowlands

Maya E Groups ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arlen F. Chase ◽  
Diane Z. Chase
Keyword(s):  
Political Organization ◽  
Archaeological Record ◽  
Ancient Maya ◽  
Maya Lowlands ◽  
The West ◽  
Small Communities ◽  
Archaeological Data ◽  
The North ◽  
Preclassic Period ◽  
Size And Structure

How the ancient Maya used E Groups needs to be derived from the archaeological record. Research undertaken in the southeast Petén of Guatemala has revealed a concentration of over 150 E Groups in the area defined by Ceibal on the west, Caracol on the east, Esquipulas on the south, and the Central Petén lakes on the north. Excavated E Groups from Cenote, Uaxactún, Caracol, and Ixtonton can be used to help organize and understand these archaeological data and to show that the E Group structural assemblage is generally early within this region, dating primarily to the Late Preclassic Period (350 BCE-0 CE) and constituting the founding architecture for an unusual number of small communities in the southeast Petén. The size and structure of the eastern platform in these E Groups also appears to serve as a proxy for broader socio-political organization. Data from Caracol also suggests the importance of these architectural assemblages for temporal ritual associated with the 8th and 9th baktun cycles. Tenth cycle ritual use of these assemblages can also be seen at sites such as Ucanal, Seibal, and possibly Yaxha. Thus, E Groups can be linked to both the rise and denouement of Maya civilization.

Short-term and long-term within-person variability in performance: An integrative model.

2014 ◽  
Vol 99 (5) ◽  
pp. 898-914 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amirali Minbashian ◽  
Daniella Luppino
Keyword(s):  
Integrative Model ◽  
Short Term

scholarly journals New Archaeological Investigations at the M. S. Roberts Site (41HE8) in the Caddo Creek Valley in Henderson County, Texas

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy K. Perttula ◽  
Arlo McKee ◽  
Mark Walters ◽  
Bo Nelson
Keyword(s):  
Internal Structure ◽  
River Basin ◽  
Aerial Survey ◽  
Topographic Map ◽  
East Texas ◽  
15Th Century ◽  
Neches River

In this article, we discuss new archaeological investigations at the M. S. Roberts site (41HE8), likely a 14th to early 15th century A.D. Caddo period mound center along Caddo Creek in the upper Neches River basin in Henderson County in East Texas. With the permission and cooperation of the landowners, we completed an aerial survey of the site to produce a detailed topographic map as well as assess the plan and profile of the mound and its associated borrow pit, and we also excavated a number of shovel tests around the mound to locate habitation deposits. Finally, a few auger holes were excavated to determine the internal structure of the M. S. Roberts site mound.

scholarly journals A Reconstruction of the Caddo Salt Making Process at Drake’s Salt Works

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul N. Eubanks
Keyword(s):  
Critical Role ◽  
Direct Access ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Archaeological Data ◽  
Salt Works ◽  
Solid Salt ◽  
Clay Deposits ◽  
Salt Flats ◽  
Historic Record ◽  
Term Storage

The Caddo salt makers at the Drake’s Salt Works Site Complex in northwestern Louisiana played a critical role in the production and trade of salt during the eighteenth century. Not only was salt used to season food, it would have also been important in the preparation of animal hides and the preservation of meat. Using archaeological data from recent excavations, as well as the historic record, this paper attempts to provide a reconstruction of the salt making process at Drake’s Salt Works. This process involved filtering salt-impregnated soil using water from nearby streams and boiling the resulting liquid brine in a thin-walled, standardized bowl. The salt bowls appear to have been made on site using clay deposits found beneath the salt flats. Once the liquid brine had evaporated leaving behind the solid salt, the salt cakes were removed from the salt bowl and prepared for short-term storage or traded to the French, Spanish, or other American Indian groups without direct access to this commodity.

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