More Like this

1. Documenting, disseminating and archiving data from the Teotihuacan Mapping Project

   https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2018.102  

   Huster, Angela C.; Cabrera-Cortés, Oralia; Forest, Marion; McManamon, Francis P.; Robertson, Ian G.; Smith, Michael E. (June 2018, Antiquity)

   The Teotihuacan Mapping Project (TMP) provided vast quantities of invaluable data to our understanding of this famous ancient city. The ‘Documenting, Disseminating, and Archiving Data from the Teotihuacan Mapping Project’ aims to analyse, re-examine and ultimately coalesce TMP data for entry into The Digital Archaeological Record. 

   more » « less
2. REFINING CERAMIC CHRONOLOGY AND EPICLASSIC REOCCUPATION AT LA VENTILLA, TEOTIHUACAN USING TRAPEZOIDAL BAYESIAN MODELING

   https://doi.org/10.1017/RDC.2023.21  

   Buckley, Gina M; Clayton, Sarah C; Gómez Chávez, Sergio; Cabrera Castro, Rubén; Eccles, Laurie; Culleton, Brendan J; Kennett, Douglas J (January 2023, Radiocarbon)

   Accelerator mass spectrometry radiocarbon (AMS 14C) dates ( n = 78) from human bone collagen were analyzed in the largest high-resolution chronology study to date at the ancient city of Teotihuacan in central Mexico (ca. AD 1–550). Samples originate from the residential neighborhood of La Ventilla, located in the heart of this major urban center. Here, a trapezoidal model using Bayesian statistics is built from 14C dates combined with data derived from the stylistic analysis of ceramics from burial contexts. Based on this model, we suggest possible refinements to Teotihuacan’s ceramic chronology, at least within the La Ventilla neighborhood. We also explore the abandonment and reoccupation of La Ventilla after the political collapse of Teotihuacan in the Metepec and Coyotlatelco phases. Findings suggest that these ceramic phases began earlier than is currently projected and that the well-documented abandonment period of La Ventilla may have occurred more abruptly than originally estimated. 

   more » « less
3. Un suburbio de Teotihuacan: Nuevas investigaciones en el barrio de Hacienda Metepec

   Forest, Marion; Somerville, Andrew (July 2023, Trace)

   This article presents the research questions and initial results of the Project Hacienda Metepec (2021-2022). Examination of the archaeological background and the recent mapping of this peripheral neighborhood of Teotihuacan allows for a discussion about its formation process, at the margin of the city. The neighborhood could have resulted from distinct urban growth processes, including planning, following the principles applied in the central sectors of Teotihuacan or, at the contrary, less planned, or unplanned sprawl. First observations of architectural elements and spatial organization suggest planning, however, the contrast between the monumentality of the neighborhood core and its relative spatial isolation remain unclear 

   more » « less
4. Horseshoe‐based Bayesian nonparametric estimation of effective population size trajectories

   https://doi.org/10.1111/biom.13276  

   Faulkner, James_R; Magee, Andrew_F; Shapiro, Beth; Minin, Vladimir_N (May 2020, Biometrics)

   Abstract Phylodynamics is an area of population genetics that uses genetic sequence data to estimate past population dynamics. Modern state‐of‐the‐art Bayesian nonparametric methods for recovering population size trajectories of unknown form use either change‐point models or Gaussian process priors. Change‐point models suffer from computational issues when the number of change‐points is unknown and needs to be estimated. Gaussian process‐based methods lack local adaptivity and cannot accurately recover trajectories that exhibit features such as abrupt changes in trend or varying levels of smoothness. We propose a novel, locally adaptive approach to Bayesian nonparametric phylodynamic inference that has the flexibility to accommodate a large class of functional behaviors. Local adaptivity results from modeling the log‐transformed effective population size a priori as a horseshoe Markov random field, a recently proposed statistical model that blends together the best properties of the change‐point and Gaussian process modeling paradigms. We use simulated data to assess model performance, and find that our proposed method results in reduced bias and increased precision when compared to contemporary methods. We also use our models to reconstruct past changes in genetic diversity of human hepatitis C virus in Egypt and to estimate population size changes of ancient and modern steppe bison. These analyses show that our new method captures features of the population size trajectories that were missed by the state‐of‐the‐art methods. 

   more » « less
5. EVALUATING THE TIMING OF EARLY VILLAGE DEVELOPMENT IN NEW YORK: MORE DATES FROM CLASSIC NEW YORK SITES

   https://doi.org/10.1017/RDC.2024.10  

   Birch, Jennifer; Manning, Sturt W; Hart, John P; Lorentzen, Brita (February 2024, Radiocarbon)

   ABSTRACT Five sites in present-day New York have played important roles in archaeological narratives surrounding the development of settled village life in northeastern North America. Excavated in the mid-twentieth century, the Roundtop, Maxon-Derby, Sackett or Canandaigua, Bates, and Kelso sites include evidence related to the transition from semisedentary settlement-subsistence patterns during the twelfth through fourteenth centuries AD to those associated with fifteenth century and later settled Iroquoian villagers. Radiocarbon dates for each site were obtained early in the development of the method and again following the transition to AMS dating. Here, we present new or recently-published dates for these sites, combined with reliable existing dates in Bayesian models, including in some cases short tree-ring sequenced wiggle-matches on wood charcoal. Our results clarify the timing of each site’s occupation(s), revealing both continuity and discontinuity in the development of longhouse dwellings, sedentism, and the repeated re-use of some site locations over hundreds of years. 

   more » « less