PhD candidate Lauren Pratt will share the results of her research this research in Peru this summer. Although persistent use of sites over time is a common theme in archaeology, rapid changes in subsistence, economy, and technology throughout most of the world over the past few centuries means that anthropologists rarely have the opportunity to see such persistence in action. In the Chachapoyas cultural area of northern Peru, however, caves and rockshelters remain in regular use by local agriculturalists. Previous work in the region (Church 1996) suggests that in some cases modern use of these caves provides useful analogs to prehistoric behavior. Here, I discuss a variety of caves and rockshelters surveyed in July 2019, highlighting modern human activities and possible analogies to the past.

First year graduate student Julian Schultz will share some of the results from Florida State University's excavations (in 2016) at a Swift Creek/Weeden Island ring-midden, where he completed his undergrad. Julian analyzed the mollusk remains from three shell units, and in doing so found there to be a steep decline in the prevalence of a key resource, the eastern oyster, as the site's occupation waned. His talk will be primarily focused around this decline, the factors that may have caused it, and how this statistical drop-off potentially relates to the site's eventual abandonment. In addition, he will explore how this statistical feature places Mound Field into the prehistoric landscape, both in the Southeast and (to a degree) in a more global sense.