ANTH 012 Key Sites

Tenochtitlan

- Central Mexico (modern Mexico City)

- Description: Capital of the Aztec Empire, founded in 1325 CE, destroyed by Spanish in 1521.

- Importance: Example of state-level societies, monumental urbanism and conquest archaeology.

Chaco Canyon

- New Mexico, USA

- Ancestral Puebloan Site with massive great houses, roads and ceremonial kivas. (850-1250)

- Importance: case study in social complexity, trade and astronomy/alignment debates.

Caracol

- Belize

- Major Maya city, peak 600 CE with extensive urban planning and monumental architecture.

- Importance: Showcases Maya political power and urban scale, challenges earlier ideas of "small" Maya settlements

Nazca Lines

Southern Coastal Peru

- Geoglyphs etched into desert floor (200 BCE-600 BCE)

- Illustrates ritual landscapes, astronomy debates, and symbolic interpretation in archaeology.

Gatecliff Shelter

- Nevada, USA

- Deepest stratified rock shelter in North America.

- Importance: Used to demonstrate long-term cultural chronology and stratigraphy in the Great Basin.

Carson Desert

- Nevada, USA

- Desert environment with archaeological sites tied to wetland resources.

- Importance: Example of hunter-gatherer adaptations to changing environments

Santa Catalina de Guale

- Georgia, USA

- Mission site established by Spanish colonists in the 16th-17th centuries

- importance: Case study of culture contact, colonialism and mission archaeology.

Folsom

- New Mexico, USA

- Paleoindian bison kill site

- Importance: Discovery of fluted points embedded in extinct bison bones proved deep ant

Cahokia

- Illinois, (near St. Louis)

- Largest Mississippian mound center (1050-1350)

- Demonstrates pre-Columbian urbanism, social stratification and monumental architecture in North America

Poverty Point

- Louisiana, USA

- Earthwork mounds and ridges built 1500BCE

- Early example of large-scale construction by hunter-gatherer groups

Ozette

- Washington State, USA

- Makah village buried by mudslide 1700CE

- Exceptional preservation of wooden artifacts and insights into Northwest Coast lifeways

Hudson-Meng

- Nebraska, USA

- Paleoindian bison kill site with hundreds of bison remains

- Debated whether site is a mass kill or natural death event; important for human-animal interaction studies.

San Cristobal

- New Mexico, USA

- Large Pueblo settlement studied by A.V. Kidder. Helped establish chronological sequences for Southwest archaeology

Meadowcroft Rockshlter

- Pennsylvania

- Deeply stratified rockshelter with evidence of human occupation (ca. 16,000 ya)

- Challenges the "clovis- first" model of earliest Americans

Stonehenge

- Wiltshire, England

- Megalithic monument built in stages (3000-1500 BCE)

- Iconic Neolithic site tied to ritual, astronomy, and monumentality

Piltdown

- England

- Fossil "discovered" in 1912, later, revealed as a hoax combining human and orangutan bones

- Famous scientific fraud, cautionary tale about bias in interpreting human evolution

Laetoli

- Tanzania

- Site of fossilized hominin footprints (3.6 million years ago)

- Preserved evidence of early bipedalism, associated with Australopithecus afarensis

Olduvai Gorge

- Tanzania

- Fossil-rich paleoanthropological site studied by Louis and Mary Leakey

- Crucial for understanding early human evolution, stone tool use, and hominin species

Kerala

- Southwestern India

- Region with evidence of early trade and historic settlements

- importance case study for indian Ocean trade networks and cultural interaction

Mikea

- Madagascar

- Ethnographic group studied for hunter-gatherer subsistence

- Used as a modern analogy for understanding past hunter-gatherer adaptations.