{"id":1173,"date":"2026-05-08T10:15:23","date_gmt":"2026-05-08T15:15:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/web.saumag.edu\/aas\/?p=1173"},"modified":"2026-05-08T10:15:23","modified_gmt":"2026-05-08T15:15:23","slug":"the-society-for-american-archaeology-meetings-san-francisco","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.saumag.edu\/aas\/2026\/05\/08\/the-society-for-american-archaeology-meetings-san-francisco\/","title":{"rendered":"The Society for American Archaeology Meetings, San Francisco"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"The<\/a>

The Golden Gate Bridge, looking north towards the Marin Headlands<\/p><\/div>\n

The Society for American Archaeology met in San Francisco last week, and I had the opportunity to be one of the Survey representatives to attend and participate.<\/p>\n

I presented research about the research at Nakuukuwidish\/Holman Springs (3SV29), in Sevier County. This is the big Caddo saltworks that people from the Survey and Arkansas Archeological Society started excavating in the 1980s and went back to in the past few years. That research project involves the excavation, obviously, but is now in a stage where we are working on processing the artifacts and getting radiocarbon dates and residue analyses completed. We are also sifting through the project records, trying to identify patterns of features that will help us reconstruct the houses and other structures that once stood on the site. As we start getting these done, we are able to refine our understanding of the site. Papers and presentations like these help us by requiring the occasional stock-taking on the progress of our research.<\/p>\n

This presentation melded our current radiocarbon dates for the site with the patterns of the feature data that we are still untangling. Those features (things like postholes, hearths, and sherd clusters) are a difficult set to interpret because there are so many of them. One of our 2x2m test units had 28 postholes in it when we excavated it in 2024. That is much higher than usual. Regardless, I believe we have evidence for two round houses that stood on the site plus a rectilinear structure. These are not the only things built there, as the dense clustering of postholes suggests that there were multiple structures built there at different times, with their footprints overlapping. The radiocarbon dates span the early 1200s to late 1500s. I made the point in the presentation that these things together suggest that Caddos lived at the site consistently for much of that 300-year period, something that having a ten foot-tall mound of pottery would support. This stands in sharp contrast to the salt furnace, which we are pretty sure was used only for a few years in 1830 and then again during the Civil War in the 1860s. I think this is due to the way in which salt was made and the amount of fuel wood required. The furnace had to be kept literally boiling hot whenever it was in operating, and that required vast amounts of wood. The Caddos used fire, but their need for fuel was much less, making their presence much more sustainable.<\/p>\n

Outside of presenting my own research, the SAAs were a great time to catch up on the research being done by colleagues all over the world. Though it was the Society for\u00a0American<\/em> Archaeology conference, there were papers focusing on Asia, Africa, and Europe there, as well (they were done by American archeologists, so they could be included). I sat in on anything related to 1) Caddo Archeology, 2) Conflict Archeology, and 3) cool topics that fit into my schedule. The overlap in paper sessions meaning I couldn’t make it to everything I wanted to see, but I got to see some really interesting papers. Our Arkansas colleagues presented work on the Greenbrier site, in Independence County, and I had a conflict but John Samuelsen, from our Coordinating Office, presented some of his research, too. There was a really interesting session on archeological research on carceral communities (prisons, POW camps, poor houses, etc.), too. I spent Thursday through Saturday in wall-to-wall research sessions.<\/p>\n

The conference book room was the usual mix of vendors selling tech and merch plus presses selling the latest books. There was a pretty neat display of a high-frequency GPR antenna imaging items in a clear box, showing the resolution the antenna could provide. Another company had a laser-based pottery scanner… which was cool… but kind of activated my inner curmudgeon (in my day, we used pencils and profile gauges!!) that could be really useful. I made notes on about a dozen books that I might see about getting added to the library here at SAU as well as ponying up for one book (Mackenthun and Mucher’s\u00a0Decolonizing Prehistory<\/em>) that looked really interesting.<\/p>\n

Of course, being in San Francisco was a treat. I took some time to explore the city after the papers each day. I had a bike with me and used it as much as possible, finding that the city’s legendary hills are no joke. I had never been across the Golden Gate Bridge… now I have been. I also got to explore the Embarcadero, Presidio, and Japantown. I didn’t make it to Lombard Street, though. Drat.<\/p>\n

That’s about it. I am grateful for having gotten to go. It was great to catch up on current research and see what new books are out there. I look forward to incorporating the info into my own research and bringing some of it to my classes at SAU.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Society for American Archaeology met in San Francisco last week, and I had the opportunity to be one of the Survey representatives to attend and participate. I presented research about the research at Nakuukuwidish\/Holman Springs (3SV29), in Sevier County. This is the big Caddo saltworks that people from the Survey and Arkansas Archeological Society… Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":785,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1173","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.saumag.edu\/aas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1173","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.saumag.edu\/aas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.saumag.edu\/aas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.saumag.edu\/aas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/785"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.saumag.edu\/aas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1173"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/web.saumag.edu\/aas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1173\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1176,"href":"https:\/\/web.saumag.edu\/aas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1173\/revisions\/1176"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.saumag.edu\/aas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.saumag.edu\/aas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.saumag.edu\/aas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}