Preliminary abstract: Early archaeological sites in Alaska are characterized by distinct microblade and biface stone tool technologies interpreted to represent the first inhabitants of the Americas, and hypothesized to have arrived from Siberia via the Bering Land Bridge approximately 15,000 years ago. However, the chronological patterning of these artifacts is inconsistent throughout interior Alaska, and reasons for variability among stone tool assemblages of this antiquity remain poorly understood.

Preliminary abstract: The widespread popularity of Swift Creek Complicated Stamped pottery during the Middle and Late Woodland period (ca. cal. AD 100-800) across much of the southeastern United States represents a 'global' phenomenon that linked many distinct societies and cultures. The vessels were used in a variety of social contexts and show definitive evidence of connections between sites in the impressions from carved wooden paddles used in vessel manufacture and decoration.

MATTHEW DANIEL WALLS, then a student at the University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada, was awarded funding in April 2011, to aid research on 'Frozen Landscapes, Fluid Technologies: Inuit Kayak Hunting and the Perception of the Environment in Greenland,' supervised by Dr. Max Friesen. This project explores how technologies can characterize the manner through which people experience and come to perceive their environment. The fieldwork is an ethnoarchaeological project in Greenland where the skills of seal-skin kayak hunting are practiced as a means of engaging Inuit heritage.

C. DAVID VAUGHAN, while a student at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, New Mexico, received a grant in June 2001 to aid research on mining, colonialism, and interaction in the western Spanish borderlands, under the supervision of Dr. Ann F. Ramenofsky. Vaughan's investigation of mining and metallurgy in colonial New Mexico produced a new, multidisciplinary synthesis that contradicted some traditional ideas about sixteenth- and seventeenth-century mining in the western Spanish borderlands.

JONATHAN VAN HOOSE, then a student at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico, received funding in December 2003 to aid research on 'Learning Lineages as Reflected in Ceramic Production in Early Historic Northwest New Mexico,' supervised by Dr. Ann F. Ramenofsky. This project studied the dynamics of interaction throughout northern New Mexico between AD 1500-1750 by examining the flow of information about ceramic technology between Navajo populations in the Dinetah and northern Rio Grande Pueblo groups.

DR. SCOTT VAN KEUREN, Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, Los Angeles, California, was awarded a grant in May 2004 to aid research on 'Empowering Style: The Transformation of Ancestral Pueblo Crafting in Eastern Arizona.' The grant supported fieldwork at two large Ancestral Pueblo villages (Fourmile and Pinedale ruins). The fieldwork and subsequent analyses clarify an important period of reorganization in ancient Pueblo societies, a time when large ceremonial plazas and iconographic-style pottery appear.

JUN UENO SUNSERI, then a student at University of California, Santa Cruz, California, received funding in April 2006 to aid research on 'Historic Archaeology of a Spanish Colonial Buffer Settlement in Northern New Mexico,' supervised by Dr. Judith A. Habicht-Mauche. This case study of a historic buffer settlement (LA 917) on the northern frontier of Colonial New Mexico uses multiple.

CAMILLA SPELLER, then a student at Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, Canada, received funding in October 2007 to aid research on 'Investigating the Process of Turkey Domestication through Ancient DNA Analysis,' supervised by Dr. Dongya Yang. Animal domestication revolutionized the lives of pre-historic peoples, their relationship with their environment, and their technological and social development. Ancient DNA analysis, which recovers genetic material from archaeological remains, has the unique ability to document this complex process in the past.