1993 — 1995 |
Spielmann, Katherine |
N/AActivity Code Description: No activity code was retrieved: click on the grant title for more information |
Dissertation Research: Craft Production and the Organization of a Hohokam Platform Mound Community @ Arizona State University
Under the direction of Dr. Katherine Spielmann, Mr. James Bayman will collect data for his doctoral dissertation. He will conduct archaeological excavation at the site of Marana in the Sonoran Desert of Arizona. This site, constructed and occupied by Hohokan peoples, dates from approximately AD 1100-11350 and consists, in effect of a vast multi-site community which spans a 146 km square area and cross-cuts three environmental zones. To date, research has been conducted in two of these zones and with National Science Foundation support Mr. Bayman will excavate in the third of these to collect comparative data. He will place 1 x 2 meter test pits in four of the largest refuse middens which appear the represent the remains of separate households. He will then analyze the materials recovered both to determine the kinds of production activities which characterized this zone and nature and frequency of "exotic" materials. With these data he will attempt to reconstruct the social, political and economic organization of Marana. By early in the first millennium A.D. Hohocam peoples had developed a complex society which knit together large numbers of peoples in a harsh and unpredictable desert environment. Archaeologists wish to understand how Hohocam groups organized themselves to exist successfully in this seemingly difficult situation. In many areas groups developed large scale irrigation systems and archaeologists believe that the need both to build and then maintain canals led to the growth and continual reinforcement of political centralization. The Marana community is interesting because this group appears to have depended on rainfall agriculture and a canal system is not present. Mr. Bayman believes that a combination of economic specialization by subregion and control of exotic materials by elites served the same social function as canals and his research will evaluate this hypothesis. This work is important for several reasons. It will increase our understanding of an only partially understood period in American prehistory. It will shed new light on how societies at a simple level of technology adapted to harsh and unpredictable environments and finally it will contribute to the training of a promising young scientist.
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0.915 |
1994 — 1995 |
Spielmann, Katherine |
N/AActivity Code Description: No activity code was retrieved: click on the grant title for more information |
Dissertation Research: Differential Resource Access in a Thule Eskimo Whaling Community @ Arizona State University
9313627 Spielmann Under the direction of Dr. Katherine Spielmann, Mr. Peter Whitridge will collect data for his doctoral dissertation. He has begun and will continue archaeological excavations at the site of PaJs-2 which is located in the Central Canadian arctic and was inhabited by Thule Eskimo peoples between ca. 1100 - 1450 A.D. Preliminary data indicate that the site was occupied recurrently for six to eight months a year by a group of 100 to 200 people whose economy centered in intensive harvesting of bowhead whales. Over the course of excavation, Mr. Whitridge will expose seven domestic dwellings, a ceremonial house and surrounding activity areas and middens. Because of permafrost conditions, artifactual material is well preserved and provide detailed insight into the lives of these prehistoric peoples. Mr. Whitridge will focus on status differentiation and will examine materials to gain insight into the degree of differential access to economic resources. Thus valued foods - as reflected in animal bone - and exotic and scarce commodities will provide a focus for attention. Archaeologists are interested in the origin and causes of social inequality and Thule Eskimo from this perspective are of particular interest. It is widely believed that hunter gatherer societies are basically egalitarian in nature and because of the rigors of this way of life, status distinctions between sexes and between families rarely if ever occur. However because groups such as the Thule specialized in whale hunting, food was often abundant and based on ethnographic analogy successful hunters often were accorded great respect. Mr. Whitridge wishes to examine whether such factors in fact resulted in inequalities. This research is important for several reasons. It will provide data of interest to many archaeologists. It will increase our understanding of the processes which led to the emergence of complex society and assist in the training of a promising young scientist. ***
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0.915 |
1995 — 1998 |
Spielmann, Katherine |
N/AActivity Code Description: No activity code was retrieved: click on the grant title for more information |
Prehistoric Craft-Specialization in Non-Hierarchical Societies @ Arizona State University
Spielmann With National Science Foundation support, Dr. Katherine Spielmann and her students will analyze large collections of ceramic materials excavated from three late prehistoric pueblo sites in the Salinas area of central New Mexico. Chemical analyses of paste and included temper will be combined with detailed examination of surface design. On this basis it will be possible to reconstruct the system of ceramic manufacturing and exchange across a large region and to determine how this changed over time. The work will provide important insight into prehistoric social organization and the processes which give rise to complex society. Archaeologists have noted that in many parts of the world a correlation appears to exist between population growth, population aggregation into regional centers and the emergence of craft specialization. A number of models have been postulated to explain this observation and the most popular argues that with population growth, food can become more difficult to obtain and therefore a number of individuals become craft specialists and barter goods such as ceramics to obtain necessary subsistence resources. Population growth, aggregation and craft specialization occurred concurrently in the U.S. Southwest and as a result of many years of fieldwork, Dr. Spielmann has developed a data base which provides detailed documentation of this process. Through her proposed analysis, she shall disentangle cause and effect and gain insight into the mechanisms involved. This research is important because it will provide data of interest to many archaeologists as well as Native Americans. It will shed new light on how complex societies emerge and are maintained and will assist in the training of graduate students.
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0.915 |
1999 — 2001 |
Spielmann, Katherine |
N/AActivity Code Description: No activity code was retrieved: click on the grant title for more information |
Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: Inter-Community Sociopolitical Relations Among Pueblo Iv Settlements: a Case Study From the Jumanos Pueblo Cluster, Central New Mexico @ Arizona State University
Under the direction of Dr. Katherine Spielmann, Mr. William Graves will collect data for his doctoral dissertation. He will conduct archaeological excavation at Pueblo Blanco, a late prehistoric site located in the Rio Grande region of New Mexico. Because of extensive prior research in this and comparable areas within the Southwest the general outline of the prehistory is well known. From ca. 1300 to 1450 AD ancestors of the present day Hopi peoples lived in small dispersed settlements. At the end of this time people aggregated into larger sites which formed village clusters. Series of villages, located within kilometers of each other appear to have interacted extensively among themselves and were separated from similar clusters by considerable distance. While this pattern is well described the reasons for it are not well understood. Mr. Graves will concentrate on relationships not between clusters but rather between villages in one individual group. He is interested in the processes which underlie the growth of social complexity and the factors which lead to and maintain centralized control. Such clusters provide an excellent context to examine this issue. Several conflicting models ranging from essential intervillage parity to a hierarchy based on ritual control have been proposed.
The Jumanos pueblo cluster consists of four villages of which Pueblo Blanco is one. Under Dr. Spielmann's direction student participants in the Arizona State University summer field school program have excavated two other sites which partially overlap in time and Mr. Graves has conducted a preliminary analysis of the material collected to determine the relationships between them. Excavation of Pueblo Blanco will provide a large enough data base to determine whether a status hierarchy was present and whether control was vested in a single site. Evidence to date, including ritual objects as well as pottery and bison meat imported from considerable distance suggests that such was the case. With National Science Foundation support Mr. Graves will conduct one season of excavation in the extensive trash middens which are widely distributed across the site and analyze the lithic, ceramic and faunal materials recovered.
This research is important for several reasons. It will shed new light on the prehistory of the United States and provide data of interest to many archaeologists. It will increase understanding of how social complexity develops and assist in training a promising young scientist.
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0.915 |
2002 — 2004 |
Spielmann, Katherine |
N/AActivity Code Description: No activity code was retrieved: click on the grant title for more information |
Southwestern Pueblo Subsistence, Diet, and Health Under Spanish Colonization @ Arizona State University
With National Science Foundation support, Dr. Katherine Spielmann, her students, and colleagues will analyze large collections of animal bones and botanical materials from seven years of excavation at three pueblo sites in the Salinas area of central New Mexico. These sites were missionized by Spanish friars in the 1620s, and provide a unique opportunity to investigate how Pueblo populations modified their subsistence practices and diets in response to Spanish demands on their labor and resources. Spanish records document that tribute in the Salinas area was taken in corn and antelope hides, and that governors of the province required Pueblos to collect and transport pinyon nuts and salt. The documents do not discuss how Pueblo people modified their hunting, gathering, and farming in light of these demands. Two possibilities are evident. On the one hand, lack of time and labor to pursue agriculture sufficiently to meet their needs may have caused Pueblo peoples to rely further on wild, collected famine foods. On the other hand, time and labor may have been increasingly focused on agricultural production, with traditional gathering practices curtailed. Hunting may have focused on large game for their hides, rather than the more abundant small game available in the area. Analyses of the kinds of plant and animal remains present in Pueblo middens before and after Spanish missionization will allow them to evaluate these possibilities. The impact of subsistence changes on Pueblo health will then be investigated through a synthesis of a number of analyses of human skeletal remains from one of the sites.
Previous interdisciplinary research in the southeastern and Plains areas of the United States has demonstrated marked variability in indigenous responses to European colonization. Thus far, however, indigenous changes in subsistence and diet have not been studied for the southwestern U.S. This project provides an unparalleled opportunity to undertake such an analysis, and to compare native responses in different environments and under different conditions of colonization across North America.
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0.915 |
2003 — 2005 |
Spielmann, Katherine |
N/AActivity Code Description: No activity code was retrieved: click on the grant title for more information |
Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: Evaluating the Development of Social Differentiation in the Pueblo World: Identity and Inequality in Salinas, New Mexico in the a.D. 1200s @ Arizona State University
Under the supervision of Dr. Katherine Spielmann, Matthew Chamberlin will analyze data collected during his archaeological survey in the Salinas Pueblo District of New Mexico. The Salinas region is of great interest because large, nucleated Pueblo settlements exhibiting socio-religious hierarchies and social identities defined at multiple scales-including both the village and the village cluster-appeared in the A.D. 1300s and persisted until abandonment in the late A.D. 1600s, over a century after Spanish contact. However, two phases of settlement prior to nucleation in Salinas, a dispersed phase in the A.D. 1100s and an initial aggregated phase in the A.D. 1200s, remain virtually unknown. The transition from dispersed to aggregated settlement is of great concern to anthropologists studying the development of social inequality and identity in small-scale societies. This project provides a unique opportunity to evaluate whether social inequality and multiple levels of social identity in Salinas are present in dispersed settlements, appear after aggregation, or are limited to the nucleated social environment of the A.D. 1300s.
Mr. Chamberlin's survey has gathered ceramic and landscape data associated with specific activities in the past-trade, ritual, and ceramic production-that will be used to evaluate the nature of identity and inequality among both dispersed and aggregated settlements. Specific analyses will include (1) chemical sourcing of decorated ceramics obtained in long- and short-distance trade to determine whether settlements differ in the diversity of sources and the intensity of trade relationships, (2) comparative and quantitative analyses of the physical characteristics and spatial relationships of ritual features and settlements to determine whether settlements differ in the scale and elaboration of ritual, and (3) analysis of local ceramic production to determine whether settlements possess different socially-learned technological styles. Through these analyses, it will be possible to outline the development of social identities and inequalities through time and across space and trace their relationship to the process of aggregation.
In addition to these scientific research questions, this project will contribute broadly to the public understanding of archaeology and history. The project has built close relationships with State Historic Preservation officials and National Park Service archaeologists at the nearby Salinas Pueblo Missions National Monument. By providing new information on the history of the occupants of the major pueblos in the Monument, this project will aid these organizations in their evaluation and public interpretation of Salinas cultural resources. Furthermore, a website detailing the goals and initial findings of the project is on line and will increase the public visibility of the project. Publication of project results in professional journals and presentations will communicate these results to the scientific community.
This project also contributes to the preservation of a valuable public resource. Looting of ancestral Pueblo sites is a major problem in the project area. This survey has gathered information critical to understanding this disappearing part of Pueblo history, and vital to preservation officials endeavoring to inventory the region's cultural resources. To this end, this project provides the first detailed, site-level record of the extensive cultural resources in one part of Salinas. Lastly, this project continues to build relationships with students and faculty from multiple universities. A number of undergraduate and graduate student volunteers, including the author, will receive hands-on training in a range of scientific methods used in the course of the project.
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0.915 |
2006 — 2010 |
Spielmann, Katherine Abbott, David [⬀] |
N/AActivity Code Description: No activity code was retrieved: click on the grant title for more information |
Alliance and Landscape: Perry Mesa, Arizona in the Fourteenth Century @ Arizona State University
With National Science Foundation support, Dr. David Abbott and Dr. Katherine Spielmann will lead a multi-disciplinary team from Arizona State University, to conduct a two-year archaeological research project in central Arizona. Compelling evidence for endemic warfare during the late prehistoric times has been documented in many areas of the American Southwest, and some models postulate hostilities at a macro-regional level. Among them is the Verde Confederacy, which has been described as a highly coordinated alliance that encompassed 10,000-13,000 people at 135 settlements in the middle Verde River valley, Bloody Basin, and Perry Mesa during the 14th century. This confederacy is believed to have been aligned for conflict against a larger, irrigation-based Hohokam polity in the Phoenix basin to the south. Did marco-regional warfare perpetrated by large-scale alliances truly exist during the 1300s in central Arizona? If it did, how was the Verde Confederacy organized and what was the web of relations within it? If it did not, at what scale(s) did alliances develop in the increasing hostile landscape of the late prehistoric period?
To address these questions, a three-component strategy has been formulated, using ceramic, architectural, and paleoclimatic data. By tracing ceramic transactions, this project investigates the local, regional, and macro-regional networks of social interaction among members of the proposed Verde Confederacy, and between them and their postulated Hohokam enemies. The Verde Confederacy model predicts numerous social and economic ties and the transfer of goods among the confederacy members. A ceramic compositional study, aided by petrographic thin section analysis and chemical assays with an electron microprobe, categorizes the pottery from different portions of the confederacy according to provenance, providing the means to trace the movement of pots across central Arizona.
In addition, architectural and paleoclimatic evidence is used to evaluate the extent to which the local and regional settlement patterns were dictated by a defensive strategy implemented by a large-scale confederacy. According to the Verde Confederacy model, numerous settlements were newly established in the late 1200s on Perry Mesa to guard the alliance's western flank. This project determines if settlements were constructed as a unit to accommodate a population moving en masse to take up defensive positions. It also considers an alternative model for the Perry Mesa occupation by examining paleoclimatic indicators to determine if Perry Mesa was more conducive to farming at that time, as compared to deteriorating conditions in an abandoned foothills zone immediately to the south.
The intellectual merit rests on addressing a key question in Southwest archaeology: What was the maximum scale at which polities organized themselves, and what were the forces and constraints that drove those developments? The broader impacts come from: 1) enhanced interaction with the Hopi and Yavapai peoples, whose ancestral territories included Perry Mesa and its immediate surroundings; 2) the integration of education and research that includes both undergraduate and graduate students; and 3) knowledge exchange with BLM and Tonto National Forest land managers who manage and interpret for the public the history and nature of the prehistoric occupation on Perry Mesa.
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0.915 |
2010 — 2012 |
Spielmann, Katherine Kruse-Peeples, Melissa (co-PI) [⬀] |
N/AActivity Code Description: No activity code was retrieved: click on the grant title for more information |
Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: Prehistoric Agricultural Productivity in the Perry Mesa Region, Central Arizona @ Arizona State University
Under the direction of Dr. Katherine Spielmann, Melissa Kruse-Peeples will conduct investigations of ancient agricultural systems in the Perry Mesa region of Central Arizona. Perry Mesa, located 90 miles north of Phoenix, was occupied by prehistoric farmers living in large aggregated villages from approximately A.D. 1275-1450. Agricultural land use focused on runoff, a strategy in which fields are placed in locations that receive additional inputs of water from runoff flowing down gentle hillslopes during intense storms. The construction of small terraces perpendicular to the slope maximizes water retention and renews fertility by capturing organic debris and sediments washing down slope. The region abounds with the remains of these prehistoric farming systems. It is not clear whether the extensiveness of agricultural fields on Perry Mesa reflects high agricultural potential or the fact that farming was difficult, requiring significant investment in the landscape to improve its productivity. In addition, the density of prehistoric fields could indicate that these farmers needed to practice a land-extensive cultivation strategy that involved frequent rotation of fields to maintain soil fertility. Using the prehistoric occupation of Perry Mesa as a case study, Kruse-Peeples will take an interdisciplinary approach, drawing on archaeology and ecology to understand the long-term productivity and sustainability of agriculture in arid regions.
This project integrates archaeological investigations of the prehistoric settlements and farming systems with ecological methods of soil nutrient analysis and soil moisture measurements. Analyses include (1) investigation of how effective terrace systems are at capturing and retaining surface runoff, (2) determination of the soil fertility and renewal through nutrient analysis of agricultural soils and runoff , (3) a simulation model to determine the dynamics of soil fertility over time as crops extract nutrients and management of surface runoff renews fertility, (4) a GIS analysis to document the distribution of landscape modifications on Perry Mesa, and (5) reconstruction of the prehistoric population based on the size of archaeological sites to determine the amount of land required to support these communities. Together, these analyses will provide a characterization of the agricultural potential of the Perry Mesa landscape that assesses how technologies such as terracing and practices such as management of runoff relate to agricultural productivity. Kruse-Peeples will use this information to determine if the agricultural landuse in the Perry Mesa region was sustainable, and if potential landscape depletion was a factor in why the area was eventually abandoned after less than 200 years of occupation.
This study will contribute to graduate student training and continue on-going interdisciplinary collaborations between archaeologists and ecologists focused on understanding the long-term consequences of prehistoric landuse in the Southwest, and sustainable solutions for contemporary arid land agriculture. An undergraduate student will participate in the research as a field assistant and will gain interdisciplinary training in archaeology and soil ecology. Additionally, a public symposium about the research will be organized to disseminate the results to federal land managers of the Perry Mesa area (Bureau of Land Management and the US Forest Service) as well as Native American communities affiliated with the region.
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0.915 |
2012 — 2015 |
Spielmann, Katherine Kintigh, Keith (co-PI) [⬀] Clark, Tiffany (co-PI) [⬀] Lee, Allen (co-PI) [⬀] |
N/AActivity Code Description: No activity code was retrieved: click on the grant title for more information |
Faunal Resource Depression and Intensification in the North American Southwest: Digital Data and Regional Synthesis @ Arizona State University
With National Science Foundation Support, Dr. Katherine Spielmann will lead an interdisciplinary team of archaeologists and software developers in the analysis of the factors that led to the over-hunting of large game (principally antelope and deer) in the American Southwest between A.D. 1200 and 1500. This period of time is characterized by large-scale migrations, and aggregation of people into towns of 500-1000 residents. During this time some archaeological animal bone assemblages indicate a decline in the availability of large game. There is currently no regional-scale understanding of the factors that promoted over-hunting in some areas but not in others. The two primary factors to be investigated are 1) population size, concentration, and persistence on the landscape, and 2) environmental variation. The team will then investigate the contexts in which people chose to intensify turkey husbandry in response to declining access to meat from wild game. Although domesticated turkeys are known from the Southwest by A.D. 500, until the 1100s they were largely raised for feathers. After that time some populations intensified turkey production for consumption, while others did not. Why this variation existed is a target of the project. From this perspective the project is important because it will provide insight into long term interactions between a society at a relatively "simple" level of social and subsistence organization and the environment within which it existed. The results will be generalizable to many other cultures and regions of the world.
The project is innovative in the scale at which animal bone data from a diversity of prehistoric village sites across the Southwestern US will be integrated to address the issue of human impacts on the environment. Although in the past researchers have undertaken synthetic analyses at smaller scales, these have generally used animal bone data presented in summary form in the published literature. Rather than depend on published data, these syntheses will rely on analyses of an integrated composite of original faunal datasets. The PI's approach to synthesis using the original datasets is made possible through use of tDAR (the Digital Archaeological Record; http://tdar.org), a repository for digital archaeological data. Members of the project's Southwestern Faunal Working Group are uploading their datasets into tDAR. The software development team will then work with the Faunal Working Group to streamline tDAR's groundbreaking analytical tool that allows the integration of datasets (or spreadsheets) that were recorded by different investigators using inconsistent analytical protocols. This integration brings the animal bone data into a single classificatory scheme, thus making it possible to analyze faunal datasets in a manner that allows the research team to address anthropological questions in ways that have not heretofore been possible.
The intellectual merits of the project lie in demonstrating the scientific value of large-scale dataset sharing and integration for addressing a diversity of anthropological questions. The project will significantly enhance the anthropological understanding of long-term interaction between people and their environment, and will improve research using archaeological animal bone data. The broader impacts of the project include training of undergraduate and graduate students through internships and research assistantships, and workshops on tDAR for cultural resource management communities. In addition, scientists in other fields will be able to access these archaeological data and use this project's tools and protocols to address broader issues of biodiversity and environmental change.
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0.915 |