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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Heads Or Tails? Modified Ceramic Gaming Pieces From Colonial California, Lee M. Panich, Emilie Lederer, Ryan Phillip, Emily Dylla Aug 2017

Heads Or Tails? Modified Ceramic Gaming Pieces From Colonial California, Lee M. Panich, Emilie Lederer, Ryan Phillip, Emily Dylla

Faculty Publications

Modified ceramic disks have been recovered from historic-era sites across the Americas. Small unperforated disks are commonly interpreted as gaming pieces and larger perforated disks are often classified as spindle whorls. Here, we examine these interpretations in light of collections from three colonial-era sites in central California: Mission San Antonio de Padua, Mission San José, and the Rancho San Andrés Castro Adobe. We argue that the small unperforated disks from our study sites were two-sided dice. These gaming pieces facilitated the social cohesion of Native people living in the large, multiethnic Indigenous communities that formed around Spanish colonial missions and …


Data For The Distribution Of Flat-Backed Canteens, Kristina L. Whitney Jan 2017

Data For The Distribution Of Flat-Backed Canteens, Kristina L. Whitney

Anthropology Graduate Student Publications

Since water transport vessels are often a highly conservative vessel form, the appearance of a new water vessel shape—the flat-backed canteen—in the American Southwest around the time of Spanish arrival raises questions concerning its introduction. These data are the basis of a study aimed at documenting the presence of the flat-backed canteen in the American Southwest from the sixteenth through twentieth centuries and explores changes in their distribution and use through time. A total of 128 flat-backed canteens were analyzed from archaeological and ethnographic collections, while 97 additional New World canteens were documented through an extensive literature review. Its contemporary …


Asymmetry Of Caddo Ceramics From The Washington Square Mound Site: An Exploratory Analysis, Robert Z. Selden Jr. Jan 2017

Asymmetry Of Caddo Ceramics From The Washington Square Mound Site: An Exploratory Analysis, Robert Z. Selden Jr.

CRHR: Archaeology

While pursuing a study of 3D geometric morphometrics for ceramic burial vessels that often articulate with the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) from the ancestral Caddo region, there have been no shortage of potentially meaningful observations, one of which--rotational asymmetry in coil-built vessels--is discussed here. Using Geomagic Design X (reverse-engineering software) and Geomagic Control X (inspection software), metrics associated with rotational asymmetry were generated then analyzed. Results indicate variable asymmetry among the different vessel shapes (i.e., bottles, jars, etc.), which may augment and strengthen studies and discussion of vessel form. Future directions include the incorporation of directional …