SAS is excited to announce the winner and honorable mention for the R.E. Taylor Poster Award given at the Society for American Archaeology’s 2026 Annual Meeting. This award acknowledges innovative student contributions to archaeological research through the use of scientific methods, and has enhanced the careers of prominent young scholars and professionals for more than two decades.
Winner – Jordan J. Thompson (Washington State University)
This year’s winner is Jordan J. Thompson, a PhD candidate in the Department of Anthropology at Washington State University. Jordan’s poster, entitled “Reexamining the Weitas Creek Site (10CW30): An Early Nimiipuu Hunting Camp,” presents a reanalysis of the site through conventional archaeological methods and a collaborative, community-engaged framework. New research including fine-grained excavation, chronometric dating, geoarchaeological analysis, lithic technological analysis of new and archival materials, and geochemical sourcing of lithic artifacts are woven together through an ethnogeological storytelling approach. These analyses provide a refined understanding of the chronology of the Weitas Creek site, dating to at least 10,300 BP, and provide insight into Nimiipuu (Nez Perce) changing landscape adaptations within the context of social dynamics in a liminal territory.
As people develop subsistence strategies to meet the needs of the local environment, they repeatedly make investments in the landscape, which impose structure and ideology onto landscapes, indicative of local ontology and placemaking. Broadly, this research investigates human-environment relationships by examining how land use relates to mobility, knowledge, and placemaking as part of landscape exploration and the establishment of the seasonal subsistence cycle among the Nimíipuu (Nez Perce) in the context of social and ecodynamics over time in the liminal territory of the Bitterroot Mountains.
Congratulations, Jordan!
Honorable Mention – Max Shachar (University of Missouri-Columbia, MURR Archaeometry Laboratory)
SAS has awarded an Honorable Mention to Max Shachar of the MURR Archaeometry Laboratory for his poster “Compositional analysis of post-Tiwanaku Sama-Cabuza sherds and clays from Los Batanes, Tacna, Peru (12th century).” Los Batanes (Sama Valley, Tacna) was occupied by Tiwanaku descendant agropastoralists (12th c. CE) who produced a Tiwanaku-inspired ceramic style: Sama-Cabuza. We report on a pilot study of neutron activation analysis (NAA) of 18 Sama-Cabuza ceramic sherds from Los Batanes and three local clay samples conducted at MURR’s archaeometry lab. Like contemporaneous post-collapse communities, potters at Los Batanes relied on a variety of raw materials available in the local desert environment, using the same materials to produce decorated and non-decorated ceramics. The geochemical similarities present within two outlier sherds to highland sherd samples point to the existence of extensive ceramic trade networks at Los Batanes despite the collapse of Tiwanaku’s cultural sphere of influence.
Max is interested in using archaeological science to understand craft production processes, trade and exchange, and technological responses to social and/or environmental transformation. Most of his work takes place in the South-central Andes during the Late Intermediate Period (1000-1450 C.E.), a time of intense cultural and demographic change in the wake of the Tiwanaku and Wari empires collapse. Many traditional ceramic technologies common during the Middle Horizon (500-1000 C.E.) appear to be lost and/or replaced. Max seeks to understand how humans navigate the loss of technological knowledge long-term. What can loss, innovations, and revivals of technological knowledge tell us about the social conditions under which artisans operated? How can we use archaeological science to delineate these adaptations?
Congratulations, Max!
