Acoustic imagery techniques and equipment have rapidly progressed and become readily available to the public in recent years. A high-frequency side-scan sonar can often be found for just a few hundred dollars. Additionally, many recreational units now have dGPS capabilities. This poster will present and analyze imagery of shallow-water shipwrecks collected with multiple side-scan sonar systems both “off the shelf” and commercial, to analyze the utility and limitations of ‘cost effective” sonar systems for archaeological purposes.

This study delves into the elemental composition of buttons from two middle-class farmsteads in Frederick County, Virginia: the Baldwin’s Gap Site and the Niswander Farmstead. Utilizing X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy (XRF), we obtained semi-quantitative data on the elemental composition of XX copper alloy buttons, which we compared to other button attributes (shank type, presence/absence of guiding, makers marks, etc.). The goal of the study was to find copper alloy recipes that could differentiate otherwise identical buttons. Our findings reveal distinct patterns in elemental composition, suggesting variations in manufacturing practices and trade networks. This study emphasizes the role archaeometric analyses can play in enriching our understanding of historical lifestyles and economic conditions, offering a tangible connection to the past through the seemingly simple yet culturally significant artifacts.

Germanna is one of the first German settlements in Virginia and offers us a look into early colonial life. The ceramics we analyzed are from the early to mid 18th century from two sites, the Enchanted Castle House (1720) and Germanna (1724). For this project, we analyzed over 100 ceramic sherds using the XRF (X-Ray Fluorescence), which is a non-destructive method for determining elemental composition. Using the relative nickel content of these samples, we were able to determine that while many of the Germanna ceramics were imported from Europe, a substantial number were made in the Americas. This suggests that while settlers at Germanna maintained relations across the Atlantic, they also routinely turned to local potters to meet their household needs.

One year ago, we presented a poster in New Orleans on the virtual archaeology game we developed based on the Old D’Hanis Archaeological Mapping Project. Discover Old D’Hanis was a collaborative effort that included archaeologists, computer science students, music students, and digital artists, drawing on years of community-based archaeology in Medina County, TX to create an immersive, educational experience that investigates the many layers of the town’s history. In Detroit, we will present updates on the game, including its migration from the game engine Unity to Unreal, the uses of Nanite technology in improving visualization and performance, and the results of its tiered release on Steam. You can also try the game yourself and provide feedback as we plan for next steps.

The Lake George Battlefield State Park (Warren County, New York) contains the remains of Indigenous land use for millennia and twenty-five years of military action and encampment spanning the French and Indian War through the American Revolution. This poster presents the findings of recent archaeological investigations using ground-penetrating radar and excavation. The project includes student training, avocational volunteer participation, and public engagement. In this on-going project, remote sensing and limited excavation are used as tools for preservation planning and stewardship, as well as growing knowledge of the millennia of land use along the southern shore of Lake George.

This study presents the results from a single Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) survey over the locally identified “baby section” at Windsor Grove Cemetery (Windsor, Ontario). Twenty-seven headstones of individuals age 4.5 and under were identified. All individuals died between 1949-1954. Only ten of the twenty-seven identified headstones showed anomalies which could be directly associated to a specific burial. The low amount of anomalies was surprising, given the consistent soil type, age at death, time of death, and environmental conditions. Information regarding the width, length, and depth of anomalies was collected. A range of anomaly shapes and sizes was identified. These results suggest that researchers should avoid discounting shallow or small anomalies, and should take care in defining the perimeter of unmarked cemeteries, as the cemetery could be larger than the initial distribution of anomalies suggest.

The development of professional photography in the mid-19^th century allowed middle class families to visually document their lives in a way that had previously been reserved for the societal strata that had the financial resources and leisure to hire a portrait painter. In the Victorian era, photography of the recently deceased became a common practice to memorialize a loved one, creating a wealth of historical artifacts that reflect a cultural practice of a specific social class and time period.

In the authors’ respective classes on the Anthropology of Death and Dying, students are tasked with staging their own “postmortem” photographs and analyzing their self-portraits in reflective assignments. We used thematic analysis of their verbal presentations and essays to identify what the students viewed as the key elements of this practice and how the assignment informed them about historical funerary traditions.

The Sanisera site on Menorca, Spain, dates to the 4^th through 7^th centuries AD. Inhabitants were presumed European, but the proximity of Menorca to Africa and the other Balearic Islands would have made it accessible to populations throughout the Mediterranean. Ancestry was estimated for a complete (85%+) individual from Necropolis 6 (UF2222) using cranial and dental morphology and two metric analyses. Cranial and dental morphology are consistent with African Ancestry, with accuracies of 73.3% to 86.6%. Giles and Elliot (Giles & Elliot, 1962) scores UF2222 as African, though close to European. FORDISC reported the highest classification accuracies for European-American females (WF20); Howell’s method also classified the craniometrics as European. When FORDISC was run with a stepwise analysis, the highest accuracies were African-American females (BF20) and African populations. These results suggest that methods for estimating ancestry for modern populations are inappropriate for UF2222, and/or that the individual is of mixed ancestry.

The case study presented here examines the remains of a young adult female (UF2397) excavated from Necropolis 6 at the Sanisera site (Menorca, Spain). The tombs from this necropolis are associated with an ecclesiastical complex and basilica dating to Late Antiquity (525-725 AD). The right femoral head of UF2937 displays marked circumferential bony reaction, leading to a notable difference in size when compared to the left femoral head diameter (R= 50.79mm, L= 43.82mm). Additionally, the right acetabulum is abnormally deep (coxa profunda) and displays moderate eburnation. We suggest that this observed pathology may be the result of a congenital malformation of the hip joint. Differential diagnoses, such as injury due to dislocation, are also discussed, along with implications for the Sanisera sample at large.

Benzene is one of the earliest known organic carboxylic aromatic petrochemicals. First described in the 16th century by Nostradamus (and others) in its natural form- gum benzoin (benzoic acid), derived from the resin of genus Styrax trees, it was considered valuable both medicinally and as a food preservative. In 1825, Michael Faraday isolated benzene from "illuminating gas" for lighting, leading to the study of organic chemistry. By the mid-1800s, it was being distilled from coal tar as part of the process to create aniline textile dyes. By the end of the 19th century, it was used for many other purposes, including as an industrial solvent and an engine fuel. Although now recognized as a carcinogen with exposure linked to leukemia, in the 19th century it was also being occasionally abused as a consumed intoxicant. This poster will provide an introduction to Benzene, and explore its historical use and cultural significance.