Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Baller Biface Cache: A Possible Clovis Site In Hitchcock County, Nebraska, Alan J. Osborn

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

Twenty-six Clovis implement caches are known from western North America. In cases where time-sensitive artifacts (e.g., Clovis projectile points or mammoth ivory rods) or adequate information about their provenience and geological context are absent, assigning temporal and cultural affiliation has been challenging. Such is the case with a cache of eight large bifaces, four of which were donated by Albert E. Baller in the early 1900s to the University of Nebraska State Museum. The cache was discovered along with debitage within a small tributary of the Republican River in south-central Nebraska. The four donated Baller bifaces have been curated since …

Medieval Nemea: Building A Public Digital Resource, Lauren A. Vagts, Effie Athanassopoulos

UCARE Research Products

This site presents medieval ceramics from the excavations at the site of Nemea, in southern Greece. We have created a digital resource with results and artifacts from archaeological excavations conducted in the 1970s and 1980s, which have remained unpublished. The website incorporates a variety of materials, including excavation notebooks, maps, data bases, photographs, and 3D models of ceramics. Omeka was selected as the software for this project for several reasons. Omeka offers the Dublin Core metadata as a way to standardize and organize digital data, allowing its users access to a well-developed platform. Omeka is also an open source software …

Integrative 3d Recording Methods Of Historic Architecture: Burg Hohenecken From Southwest Germany, Aaron C. Pattee

Anthropology Department: Theses

This research explores the methodology and application of photogrammetric and laser-scanning recording methods to a castle ruin, with the primary purpose of digitally preserving the castle. Both methods generated interactive 3D models via the combination of still images (photogrammetry) and precise laser measurements (laser-scanning), which were then combined into a single model. The case study is the medieval castle ruin Burg Hohenecken located in the city of Kaiserslautern in southwest Germany. The castle was active from 1212-1689, as one of over fifty castles within the region of the Pfalz. The inhabitants included the noble von Hoheneck family and various …

Usda-Unl Artifacts Roadshow: The Development Of A 2d Archive Of Great Plains Projectile Points, Maia Behrendt

UCARE Research Products

The Archaeological Survey is primarily concentrated through Federal and State lands. Nebraska like much of the Great Plains is overwhelmingly privately owned. As a consequence less than 1% of the state has been subject to professional survey. Private land owners, however, know of many archaeological sites that have not been documented. Engagement with the public about sites and about collected artifacts thus has the potential to greatly increase knowledge of the past.

Over the past three years the University of Nebraska and the USDA Forest Service have conducted “Artifacts Roadshows” to talk with land owners about private artifact collections. These …

Past Meets Future: Combining Gis, 3d Technologies, And Legacy Data To Reanalyze Ceramics At Copan, Honduras, Stephanie Sterling, Heather Richards-Rissetto, René Viel

UCARE Research Products

The archaeological site of Copán—a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Honduras—was a primary center for cultural and economic exchange in the Maya world from the fifth to ninth centuries. Our research investigates the sociopolitical climate of the city immediately preceding this collapse. This poster presents the results of a pilot study intended to evaluate the potential of using a combination of digital technologies and legacy data to reanalyze a subset of diagnostic ceramics from select sites outside of Copan’s urban core. Our methods involved:

(1) Applying photogrammetry to generate 3D models for approximately 30 potentially temporally-diagnostic ceramic types

(2) Digitizing, …

3d Tool Evaluation And Workflow For An Ecological Approach To Visualizing Ancient Socio-Environmental Landscapes: A Case Study From Copan, Honduras, Heather Richards-Rissetto, Shona Sanford-Long, Jack Kerby-Miller

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

Architectural reconstructions are the centerpieces of ancient landscape visualization. When present, vegetation is relegated to the background, resulting in underutilized plant data—an integral data source for archaeological interpretation—thus limiting the capacity to take advantage of 3D visualization for studying ancient socio-environmental dynamics. Our long-term objective is to develop methods of 3D landscape visualization that have value for examining changes in land use and settlement patterns. To begin to work toward this objective, we have (1) identified 3D tools and techniques for vegetation modeling and landscape visualization, (2) evaluated the pros and cons of these tools, (3) investigated biological and ecological …

Maritime Alpine Cairns In Southeast Alaska: A Multidisciplinary Exploratory Study, William J. Hunt Jr., Ralph J. Hartley, Bruce Mccune, Nijmah Ali, Thomas F. Thornton

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

This report describes the goals, data recovery methods, data analysis, and conclusions of a pilot project “A Multidisciplinary Exploratory Study of Alpine Cairns, Baranof Island, Southeast Alaska,” funded by the National Science Foundation under Project No. 1230132. The project brought together experts in the disciplines of archaeology (University of Nebraska-Lincoln), lichenology (Oregon State University), and Tlingit oral history (Oxford University) to address questions regarding artificial prehistoric, high altitude cairns. Data were collected in 2013 and 2014. Pedestrian archaeological inventory recorded 50 cairns at 5 sites. Archaeological data includes cairn dimensions, GPS positions, still photographic images, and video documentation. Four cairns …