SAS Webinar

Saturday, August 1, 2026
2:00 – 4:30 PM PT
“Un-Erasing the Indigenous Paleolithic: Re-Writing the Ancient Past of the Western Hemisphere (the Americas)”
Dr. Paulette F. C. Steeves, Cree-Métis, Anthropologist /Archaeologist, Agoma University, Canada,
Abstract: In the Americas, the deep Indigenous past dating to more than 12,000 years ago has been aggressively denied by American anthropologists for over a century. Anthropologists’ denial of the deep Indigenous past of the Americas has cleaved Indigenous people’s links to their homeland and created them as recent immigrants to the Americas on a global scale of human history. Dr. Steeves has listed over 500 pre-11,200 YBP archaeological sites in a database of Pleistocene-age archaeological sites in North and South America that meet or exceed the scientific criteria for a legitimate archaeological site. Based on research and the published data of hundreds of pre-11,200 years before present archaeological sites, oral traditions, environmental evidence and paleo-mammalian migrations, She argues that people have been in the Western Hemisphere for over 130,000 years.

About the speaker: Dr. Paulette Steeves. Ph.D. (Cree- Metis) is an Indigenous archaeologist. She was born in Whitehorse, Yukon Territories, and grew up in Lillooet, British Columbia, Canada. She received her BA in Anthropology, Honors Cum Laude, from the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville in 2000. In 2008, she was awarded the Clifford D. Clark fellowship for graduate studies at Binghamton University in New York State; she successfully defended her dissertation in 2015. Dr. Steeves has taught in Canada and the USA, focusing on Native American and First Nations histories and decolonization of academia, archaeology and knowledge production. She is a Full Professor in Geography, Geology, and Land Stewardship at Algoma University. Dr. Steeves was awarded a five-year Canada Research Chair Tier II in Indigenous History, Healing, and Reconciliation for 2019-2024 and 2024-2029. Dr. Steeves’s primary research focuses on the Western Hemisphere’s Indigenous Paleolithic, reclaiming and reviving Indigenous peoples’ deep-time links to homelands and ancestors, and healing and reconciliation. She has built extensive databases of Pleistocene-age archeological sites in the Western Hemisphere (the Americas). She weaves Indigenous knowledge from oral traditions and rock art through \archaeological evidence that supports an early human entry into the Western Hemisphere as early as 200,000 years before the present. Her book The Indigenous Paleolithic of the Western Hemisphere was published in July 2021 and received the American Library Association Choice 2022 Outstanding Academic Title award.

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https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87893180517?pwd=ZG4GgFgxzMIyVmiyz3k5DaAYhWY1sn.1#success

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SAS Webinar
Saturday, June 6, 2026
2:00 – 3:30 PM PT
Scholar Seminar
“Ohlone Lifeways 10,500 Years Ago”
by
Hayley Kievman, PhD student at University of Utah
and
“From Iberia to the Eastern Steppe: Human and Neanderthal Subsistence Strategies at the Edges of Eurasia”
by
Madison McCartin, PhD student at University of California Davis

Abstract: The Muwekma Ohlone Tribe of the San Francisco Bay Area gave permission to Dr. Alexandra M. Greenwald, Department of Anthropology, University of Utah to do archaeometric (C14/AMS) dating analysis on their recovered remains at CA-SCL-1070/H, a 10,500 years old site located on Walsh Avenue, Santa Clara. This research became the dissertation topic for Dr. Greenwald’s graduate student, Hayley Kievman. In this talk Hayley will report on the results of stable isotope, radiocarbon, proteomic, and ancient DNA analysis performed on these skeletal elements. Since the goal of the analysis was to learn more about the ancestor’s lifeways at this ancestral site, she will discuss her results highlighting diet and human adaptation to past climate conditions by these Ohlone ancestors.

About the speaker: Hayley Kievman is a fourth year PhD student at University of Utah who was honored with a scholarship from Sacramento Archeological Society in 2024. She received her M.S. Anthropology at University of Utah and B.A. Anthropology at Penn State. As an undergraduate and post-baccalaureate researcher at Penn State she contributed to the Human Environment Dynamics lab’s work on anthropogenic fire activity through the creation of sophisticated database and presented her research on the ecology of Cayman Island fishers facing climate change at a national level conference. In the first two years in the University of Utah Hayley formulated a Master’s project examining shellfish remains from an archaeological site in Northwest California to address mussel harvesting strategies in light of Late Holocene climatic fluctuations. Her findings suggest ancient implementation of sustainable harvesting practices still employed by descendant communities today in the region. She has published journal articles, performed extensive research and has sizable field experience. She is an on-call archaeologist with Far Western Anthropological Research Group, Davis, CA.

Abstract: The Middle-Upper Paleolithic transition marks an important shift in hominin biology and culture. The causal forces behind this transition are debated and plausible hypotheses include the influence of climate change, demographic pressure or competition between Neanderthals and humans. Madison’s dissertation focuses on hominin subsistence practices at geographic margins of Eurasia. In this presentation she will discuss her analysis of animal remains in Spain, Belgium, and Mongolia to ascertain the hunting preferences of hominins and postulate possible differences in subsistence strategies between Homo sapiens and Neanderthals, which may have led to Neanderthals’ demise.

About the speaker: Madison McCartin is a third year PhD student at University of California Davis who was honored with a scholarship from Sacramento Archeological Society in 2025. She received a B.A with highest honor in Anthropology magna cum laude from New York University, and a M.Sc in Archaeological Sciences from Institute for Archaeological Sciences at the Eberhard-Karls University of Tübingen. Her research interests include the Middle and Upper Paleolithic, hominin subsistence, paleoecology, zooarchaeology, faunal analysis, taphonomy, experimental archaeology, paleoproteomics, ZooMS, stable isotope analysis, personal ornamentation, osseous technology, bone fracture mechanics, 3D scanning and morphometrics. Her archaeological excavations include over 70 weeks in Germany, Spain, Belgium, Mongolia, the United Kingdom, Armenia and South Africa. She has extensive experience analyzing faunal remains from Paleolithic sites in Germany. She has published 5 articles and given numerous presentations.

Friends are welcome and also invited to join our organization. There is no participation fee. You are invited to attend the webinar before 2:00 PM for chat time.

SAS Webinar
Saturday, May 2, 2026
2:00 – 3:30 PM PT
Scholar Seminar
“Middle to Upper Paleolithic transition”
by
Daniel Goring, PhD Student University of California Davis

Abstract: The Middle to Upper Paleolithic transition (50-40 ka) is a critical period for understanding human climate change adaptation. This transitional period includes the disappearance of Neanderthals and the appearance of Homo sapiens in northern Eurasia. While previous climatic studies rely on broad proxies like marine isotope stages, pollen, and speleothems, these lack the resolution and site specificity needed to understand local conditions where these human transitions took place. Analysis of faunal enamel addresses this gap by enabling long-term and seasonal climatic reconstruction at the site level. This method is applied at Trou al’Wesse in Belgium —key for understanding Neanderthal extinction and human expansion into northern Europe —and at Tolbor-16 and -17, Mongolia, which document early Homo sapiens movement into northern Asia. Analysis at these sites provides the local climatic context of extinction and/or migration.

About the speaker: Daniel Goring is a PhD student at University of California in Anthropology-Evolutionary Wing. He received a scholarship in 2025 from Sacramento Archeological Society to fund travel to Europe for obtaining samples, training in phosphate extraction for δ¹⁸O analysis, and to examine stratigraphy at Trou al’Wesse and Tolbor-16 and -17. Daniel’s talk will discuss the results of his research.

SAS Webinar
Saturday, April 4, 2026
2:00 – 3:30 PM PT
Scholar Seminar
“Use of Culturally Modified Trees to Study Basque Sheepherder Movement and Carving Habits”
Kiana Hugins, Chico State University Graduate Student

Abstract: During the 19th-20th centuries Basque sheepherders moved through Northeastern California leaving inscribed images, names, and messages on aspen trees at seasonal campsites. These Culturally Modified Trees were the subject for Kiana Hugins’ Master’s thesis at Chico State. To accomplish this research she used geospatial data from 55 site records in the Lassen National Forest and applied GIS-base methods such as least-cost path to deduce sheepherders’ movement and carving habits. She conducted this research to enrich California’s archaeological narratives about place-making, land use and immigrant histories.

About the speaker: Kiana Hugins is in her final year at Chico State. She was an archaeology technician at Lassen National Forest in 2024. She surveyed trees for a hazard tree removal project and perform archaeological surveys of sites and cultural resources. She also cataloged curated pre-contact and historic artifacts from the area. As a research associate at Northeast Information Center, Chico she reviewed incoming site records from northeastern California and followed guidelines for their proper maintenance and processing. She also was the repatriation assistant at Northeast Information Center and Chico State Office of Tribal Relations where she consulted with NEIC coordinators to best assess and repatriate records containing images of Native American ancestral remains, funerary object, and sacred objects of cultural patrimony to ensure the center’s compliance with NAGPRA and CalNAGPRA.

Friends are welcome and also invited to join our organization. There is no participation fee. You are invited to attend the webinar before 2:00 PM for chat time.

SAS Scholar Seminar
Saturday, March 7, 2026
2:00 – 3:30 PM PT
“Juvenile Osteology Workshop” by Bella Garcia
and
“Archaeology Field Research School Ireland” by Janel Pleskac and David Nelson

Abstract: Bella Garcia who attended the Slavia Field School in 2024 continued her training in forensics by attending the Juvenile Osteology Research Laboratory Workshop in Romania. In this talk she will describe her experiences working with a set of 69 juvenile remains for the 17th century. Advanced technologies, such as histology and CT imaging are employed to advance this research.

About the speaker: Bella Garcia is a graduate student with a BA in Anthropology from CSUSB and is enrolled in the Anatomy & Forensic Anthropology MSc program at the University of Dundee. She was a recipient of SAS scholarship in both 2024 and 2025. In 2025 she gave SAS a presentation on her experiences at Źelewo Bioarchaeology Field School in Poland.

Abstract: At the Castles in Communities, Irish Archaeology Field School at Ballintober Castle, Ireland, both Janel Pleskac and David Nelson lived and worked in a small Irish village while participating in a six-week research and excavation project at Ballintober Castle. The program blended archaeological training in surveying, geophysical techniques, and excavation with lab analysis, giving them real experience in uncovering and interpreting the past. Beyond the fieldwork, they connected with the local community and culture through shared meals, village life, and excursions, making the experience both academically enriching and personally meaningful.

About the speaker: Janel Pleskac is a graduate student in Cultural Heritage Resource Management at Sonoma State University, specializing in community-engaged archaeology and oral history. She conducted an independent oral history project in Ballintober, Ireland, during the Castles in Communities Archaeology Field School, documenting local musical life, memory, and place-based heritage alongside archaeological research. Her work integrates oral history, archival research, and landscape archaeology to examine how living communities produce and sustain cultural heritage. She has also worked on archaeological projects in California and Ireland and currently serves as a Museum Archives Assistant at Sonoma Historic Park.
Janel will present research in progress from “Listening to Roscommon”, her community-based oral history project documenting the musical heritage of County Roscommon, Ireland, which was conducted in collaboration with the Castles in Communities Archaeology Field school. Through interviews with local musicians across multiple genres, the project treats oral histories as intangible artifacts, revealing how music, memory, and place function as layers of living cultural landscape. Her presentation will reflect on the methodological possibilities and challenges of integrating oral history into archaeological practice.

About the speaker: David Nelson is a student at Las Positas College. He is a retired electrician who is passionate about archaeology. He attended a field school through Las Positas College where he gained initial experience with excavation. In 2025 David attended the Irish Archaeology Field School at Ballintober Castle. He also attended the California Archaeology Field School at Foothill College where he participated in the excavation at Hidden Villa Farm in 2024.

SAS Webinar
Saturday, February 7, 2026
2:00 – 3:30 PM PT
“Indigenous Peoples of California’s Bay-Delta Region”
By
David Stuart
Anthropologist and former Museum Director
at
Pena Archaeology Facility (607 Pena Dr. Suite 600; Davis, CA) and via Zoom

Abstract: David Stuart will touch on the Native languages of the San Francisco Bay Area, the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, and the adjacent Central Valley heartland (“Bay-Delta”) region and will summarize the immigration and spread of the Indigenous ancestors throughout the area. He will describe the traditional lifeways of the California Indians from our region, including their care for local habitats to sustainably support a population that was among the highest in pre-colonial North America. Then he will discuss the colonial period and highlight the impact these regional Native people had on California’s colonial history.

Bay-Delta Native nations were disrupted by the missionaries and soldiers that invaded the Bay Area on behalf of the Spanish monarchy. The Delta was initially a barrier to Spanish incursions into the interior heartland, became a place of refuge that helped preserve Native cultures and autonomy, then became a base for Indigenous armed resistance. Diseases and depredations eroded the strength of heartland nations and many people went to Mission San Jose and other missions. Baptized Indians were turned out by the missions in the Mexican era to become “serfs” for the early settler/barons such as John Marsh, Johann Sutter, and Charles Weber. Indigenous people directly and indirectly assisted the USA victory over Mexico, only to suffer state- and federal-sponsored genocide during and after the Gold Rush. Nevertheless, California Indians survived and continue to be our neighbors.

About the Speaker: David Stuart began his career at Caswell State Park on the lower Stanislaus River, where he helped Indigenous women gather basketry materials. His interest stirred, Dave studied anthropology and biology at Modesto JC, Fresno State, and U Colorado. He did fieldwork—primarily CRM surveys—in the San Joaquin Valley and the Sierra Nevada from Tahoe to Tehachapi. Dave was the first Assistant State Archaeologist of Colorado. He was an archaeologist/cultural resources specialist/planner for the National Park Service, working primarily in Florida, Louisiana, and the Southwest. Dave returned to California and developed museums and programs for the City of Ventura, then he directed the Sacramento Science Center (now MoSAC), the Sacramento History Museum in Old Sacramento, and the San Joaquin County Historical Museum in Micke Grove Regional Park near Lodi. Since retiring 7 years ago, he has coauthored a book, assisted planning for the new Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta National Heritage Area, served on the boards of Exhibit Envoy and the Sacramento River Delta Historical Society, and written a series of articles on Native cultures and the history of the Bay-Delta region—the subject of the book he is now researching.

SAS Webinar
Saturday, January 3, 2026
2:00 – 3:30 PM PT
“Archaeology in Ireland and the Southwest: an educational experience”
By
Allison Champ, UC Berkeley student
via Zoom

As an aspiring professor and archaeologist, exposures to various archaeological landscapes offer differing perspectives and the opportunity for unique skill development. Two field schools that Allison attended will be the subject of her review. They were Monastic Midlands in Birr, Ireland and Crow Canyon Field School in Cortez, Colorado. Each offered contrasting environments and time scales. Allison will comment on their similarities and differences.

Allison Champ is a senior at University of California, Berkeley double majoring in Anthropology and Psychology. She is a research assistant in the Bear Bones Lab and Geoarchaeology and Southwest Asia Prehistory Lab and a data collection lead for Social Origins Lab. All are at U. C. Berkeley.
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81274184293?pwd=tUBXnZTaZ7MmwssFiUUbuK1PjKS1xI.1

“Inuit History in Northern Greenland: Fragility and Resilience”
by
Christyann Darwent, Professor of Archaeology, UC Davis
at
Pena Archaeology Facility (607 Pena Dr. Suite 600; Davis, CA and via Zoom
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84956957687?pwd=zG5MbOh8JiuysD3jD1AwKHvizT17PA.1

The Annual Meeting will be conducted in person at the U.C. Davis Pena Archaeology Facility (607 Pena Dr. Suite 600; Davis, CA), and broadcasted via Zoom starting at 2:00 PM PT with a presentation by Christyann Darwent, UCD Professor, and formally conclude after the SAS Annual Meeting. After which all attendees are invited to attend a dinner to socialize at Symposium Restaurant, Davis at 6:00 PM.

The schedule for the event is as follows:
1:00 – Set up, meet and greet (If you are unable to attend in person, you may join the webinar starting as early as 1:45 PM.)
2:00 – Featured talk “Inuit cultures in the Arctic” by Christyann Darwent
3:30 – SAS Annual Meeting
6:00 – Socialize at restaurant

Title: “Inuit History in Northern Greenland: Fragility and Resilience ” by Christyann Darwent

Abstract: Human history of the North American Arctic has been a cycle of expansions and contractions, of mobility and migration, and of fragility and resilience. Archaeology brings a long-term perspective to the relationship between humans and the arctic environment. More recently, however, the face of archaeological research and knowledge production has undergone rapid change, particularly in the past decade. Just as geneticists and isotopic chemists have discovered the wealth of information locked in the archaeological record of the arctic, these formerly frozen sites are rapidly melting or eroding into the sea. In addition, Inuit scholars and communities are redefining their relationship with archaeology and archaeologists. Based on the author’s own field work, this talk focuses on the historical ecology of Smith Sound at the northern edge of what is now Canada and Greenland. New questions and new methods have enhanced our understanding of a place that exemplifies both isolation and long-distance social bonds, precariousness and resilience.

About the Speaker: Dr. Christyann Darwent is a professor of Anthropology at UC Davis. She is originally from Calgary where she completed her undergraduate degree in archaeology and undertook her first of several field seasons in the Canadian High Arctic 30 years ago. After receiving her MA at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver and a PhD from the University of Missouri, she started her career at UC Davis in 2001. Since then, she has conducted NSF-sponsored archaeological excavations in Kotzebue Sound, Alaska and Inglefield Land, NW Greenland. For the past decade her lab has also been conducting archaeological research near the Native village of Shaktoolik in Norton Sound, Alaska. In addition to studies of past subsistence practices and social organization among Inuit, Inughuit, Inupiaq, and Yup’ik occupants of the Arctic over the past 1000 years, she has published on the history of Inuit sled dogs using ancient and modern DNA.

SAS Webinar
Saturday, November 1, 2025
2:00 – 3:30 PM PT
“Culprits behind Plate of Brass: Dare Stones”
By
Melissa Darby MA
Senior Archaeologist/Historian
Lower Columbia Research & Archaeology LLC
via
Zoom
Join Zoom meeting

In 1937, two Elizabethan artifacts came to light that created headline news across the United States and each of the alleged artifacts addressed a different long-standing Elizabethan mystery. The first artifact to come to light that year was the Drake Plate of Brass, inscribed in crude block letters of old English text and found on a hillside overlooking San Francisco Bay. A few months later a stone slab was allegedly found along the Chowan River in North Carolina. The similarly inscribed stone seemed to describe the fate of the 117 settlers of the Lost Colony of Roanoke. This presentation will demonstrate that historian Herbert E. Bolton was the ringleader of the Plate of Brass hoax, and assisted other historians, George Hammond and Haywood Pearce Jr., with the planning and implementation of the Dare Stone fraud. An underlying motive of these men was the desire to uplift a White and English national identity for America. However, one of Bolton’s motives for the Plate of Brass hoax, and perhaps his main motive, was his desire to shut down the theory that Drake landed further north on either the Oregon or Washington coasts. The paradigm is shifting, and a consensus is building among academics that Drake actually landed on the Oregon coast.

Melissa Darby is an award-winning historian and anthropologist, and affiliated research faculty in the Anthropology Department at Portland State University. She is principal investigator and sole proprietor of Lower Columbia Research & Archaeology. Darby has worked for over forty years in the Northwest and is a noted authority on the ethnohistory of the Native people of the lower Columbia River region. Her research on Native American cultures of the area includes important works on settlement patterns, plankhouse architecture, and plant foods used by the indigenous people of the region. She has contributed substantially to our understanding of the Native peoples and the world they inhabited prior to European colonization.

The seminar will start at 2:00 PM PT and formally conclude at 3:30 PM.
Friends are welcome and also invited to join our organization. There is no participation fee.
You are invited to attend the webinar before 2:00 PM for chat time.