Republic of El Salvador (Country) (Geographic Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christopher Hernandez.

A critical facet of studying past warfare is the analysis of fortifications. Fortifications are often visible on the surface, making these archaeological features identifiable through surface reconnaissance. Moreover, test pits and trench excavations into gated areas or across various sections of fortifications can be used to establish the martial functions of these archaeological features. Yet, the study of past warfare and fortifications often stumbles in the interpretive stage. How do we know...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Amanda Suárez Calderón. Yahaira Núñez-Cortés. Francisco Corrales-Ulloa.

This is an abstract from the "Warfare and the Origins of Political Control " session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Southern Central America is rich in examples of early complex societies, and yet, the timing and mechanism for the emergence of social complexity and differentiation are still not well understood. Recent works are moving archaeologists in the region to question, on the one hand, the definition of social complexity itself, and on the other...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jeffrey Splitstoser. Milosz Giersz.

Archaeological evidence suggests that khipus—devices made of wrapped and knotted cords—were used by people living in the Wari Empire at least as early as Middle Horizon 1B. These Wari-style khipus, like their later, more famous, Inka descendants, likely carried and conveyed information using color and knots. Wari khipus differ from Inka khipus, however, in many respects including their use of colorful wrapping to make bands and patterns to convey information. Wari-style khipus survive in far...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Thomas Dye. Timothy Rieth.

Archaeologists sometimes claim that the refined chronologies yielded by Bayesian calibration make it possible to distinguish between Levi-Strauss's "hot" and "cold" societies. Historians of Hawai`i leave little doubt that Hawai`i was a "hot" society in the early historic period. A review and comparison of chronologies for the tempo of change in pre-Contact Hawai`i distinguishes the "cold" society reconstituted by ad hoc methods from the "hot" society reconstituted by the Bayesian method. We...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Bruce Benz.

This is an abstract from the "Subsistence Crops and Animals as a Proxy for Human Cultural Practice" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Excavation of Coxcatlan cave recovered remains of Setaria cf. macrostachya. Analysis suggested early increase in abundance of florets (so-called seeds) in deposits associated with El Riego Phase contexts and later decrease in Coxcatlan Phase deposits. Callen observed a size increase of Setaria florets recovered from...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Thibault Saintenoy. Mauricio Uribe.

Located on the edge of the Atacama Desert at the foot of the Carangas Altiplano, the Belén Valley witnessed substantial construction of imperial infrastructures during the late pre-Hispanic period. The Inca occupation was mainly related to agriculture, metallurgy and a sanctuary. The Belén Valley contains, in fact, the most important water resources in the upper basin of Azapa, copper and tin mines and an important mountain summit, which formed both economic and symbolic resources of special...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Laura Levi. Christian Sheumaker. Sarah Boudreaux.

Social life never proceeds in the absence of a spatial dimension that defines, brackets, segregates, alters or otherwise organizes interaction. The power to organize space emerges historically from the sweep of institutional arrangements across society and operates along many different dimensions and scales, at once establishing boundaries all the while insidiously permeating them. This historical process – this "social production of space" – is what we refer to as landscape. Landscape has been...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jennifer Kahn. John Sinton.

This is an abstract from the "2019 Fryxell Award Symposium: Papers in Honor of M. Steven Shackley" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Our WDXRF sourcing program of geological and archaeological specimens (n=177) from the Society Islands, outlines the dynamics of inter- and intra-archipelago exchange over an 800 year period. Adzes from 21 sources were identified. Those traded in from the Marquesas Islands, an over 1,400 km voyage, are found with low...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Betsy Bradley.

The archaeological component of the National Historic Preservation Act Section 106 consultation embodies an intersection of power that has privileged archaeologists and their work at the expense of accomplishing all legal mandates and has elevated the practice of archaeology as a science above any need for negotiation for project-specific approaches. This cross-disciplinary conversation is necessary as the current situation increasingly affects the ability of other Cultural Resource Management...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mark McCoy.

This is an abstract from the "To Have and Have Not: A Progress Report on the Global Dynamics of Wealth Inequality (GINI) Project" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Polynesia has been largely overlooked in previous archaeological assessments of levels of wealth difference despite the pivotal role that research in the region has played in advancing our understanding of inequality in human societies. The Global Dynamics of Wealth Inequality (GINI)...

DOCUMENT Full-Text Uploaded by: Chelsea Walter

Wearing Culture connects scholars of divergent geographical areas and academic fields-from archaeologists and anthropologists to art historians-to show the significance of articles of regalia and of dressing and ornamenting people and objects among the Formative period cultures of ancient Mesoamerica and Central America. Documenting the elaborate practices of costume, adornment, and body modification in Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, Oaxaca, the Soconusco region of southern...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Molly Carney.

This is an abstract from the "Multispecies Frameworks in Archaeological Interpretation: Human-Nonhuman Interactions in the Past, Part I" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Over the last 20 years practitioners, activists, and scholars across disciplines have repeatedly pointed out the importance of incorporating other-than-human kin, relationality and reciprocity, and Traditional Ecological Knowledge into scientific practice when working with...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sharisse McCafferty. Geoffrey McCafferty.

This is an abstract from the "Cordage, Yarn, and Associated Paraphernalia" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In Bribri myth, the Creator God Sibó commanded Sál, the head of the spider clan, to weave cane and thatch to cover the cosmic house, which was built to encapsulate the world order. The house was supported by a central pole with eight surrounding posts representing each of the major clans. In 20+ years of archaeological research in Pacific...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Roger Colten. Susan deFrance. Michelle LeFebvre. Brian Worthington.

The Caribbean islands had limited endemic terrestrial fauna and they lacked any of the New World domesticated animals until fairly late in prehistory. Given the depauperate terrestrial fauna of these islands the early Native American inhabitants relied on marine resources and endemic rodents for a significant proportion of the animals in their diet. It has been argued that rodents from the family Capromyidae, various species of hutia, were managed and perhaps domesticated in the Caribbean. In...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Perry Gnivecki. Mary Jane Berman.

"Were the Lucayans a creole society?" Can creolization be inferred from Lucayan material culture during the Early and Late Lucayan Periods? Through the examination of ceramics and other remains, such as duhos and shell and stone artifacts, we will attempt to determine whether this was the case. Can Lucayan cultural expressions, unique to the Bahama archipelago, be viewed as byproducts of the processes of creolization, and if so, why?

DOCUMENT Citation Only Katelyn McDonough.

This is an abstract from the "Current Perspectives on the Western Stemmed Tradition-Clovis Debate in the Far West" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent excavations at the Paisley and Connley Caves have uncovered coeval Younger Dryas occupations with different but complementary Western Stemmed Tradition artifact assemblages. Whereas the perishable artifact assemblage at Paisley Caves provides important health and subsistence data, the large lithic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Eugenia Ibarra.

Archaeologist Francisco Corrales and myself recently undertook the study of the exploitation of natural resources and their exchange in the areas close to Juan Vázquez de Coronado´s route in 1564, traced from the Pacific coast to the Caribbean in Southeastern and Southwestern Costa Rica. This presentation aims to underline how resources of the different altitudes on both slopes formed an important part of the various activities carried out by the inhabitants during the 16th. century and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Madeline Mackie.

There has long been a debate about the frequency of megafauna hunting or dismemberment by early Paleoindians in North America. Proposed megafauna kill sites are heavily scrutinized. Sites which contain limited artifacts, but no projectile points are often discounted or classified as ‘possible’ kill sites due to their limited cultural materials. This begs the question, just how likely (or unlikely) are artifacts to be accidentally associated with megafauna remains? Using a computer model, the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mark Golitko.

This is an abstract from the "People and Space: Defining Communities and Neighborhoods with Social Network Analysis" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Network analysis has become increasingly common within archaeological practice during the last decade, yet little consensus exists as to what networks based on material culture actually reveal about ancient social life. Archaeologists have variably interpreted communities or cliques derived from...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Natalia Donner. Alejandro Arteaga Saucedo. Kaz van Dijk. Alexander Geurds.

The Proyecto Arqueológico Centro de Nicaragua (PACEN), directed by Alexander Geurds, has recently conducted archaeological research in Chontales, Central Nicaragua. The main focuses of the study include the identification of the different types of settlements, understanding site and mound morphologies, as well as re-defining the regional pottery sequence. Therefore, the authors of this paper carried out a systematic full-coverage high intensity survey of a 52 square kilometer area, a complete...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Véronique Marengère. Kevin P. Smith. James Woollett.

This is an abstract from the "Social Archaeology in the North and North Atlantic (SANNA 3.0): Investigating the Social Lives of Northern Things" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the ninth and tenth centuries CE, a very distinctive and unique site was established inside the cave of Surtshellir. This lava tube was reputed to be the home of the mythological fire giant, Surtur and has been studied over the course of several years by a team led by the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Bianca Gentil.

This study aims to identify patterns of resilience by distinguishing diachronic socio-economic processes through the measurement of change and continuity of multi-level sites in the Puebla-Tlaxcala valley. This will be done via demographic, political, and economic markers during the Classic-Postclassic transition. This project focuses on identifying specific processes that lead towards socio-economic resilience during times of stress. Based upon surveys conducted in the 1960s and 70s, presented...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dana Bardolph.

This is an abstract from the "Presidential Session: What Is at Stake? The Impacts of Inequity and Harassment on the Practice of Archaeology" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent years have witnessed a sea change in anthropological discourse concerning how gender bias and a lack of diversity has affected the work that archaeologists produce, interest that dovetails with current concerns about equity and safety issues. More broadly, Black,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christina Giovas.

This is an abstract from the "The Intangible Dimensions of Food in the Caribbean Ancient and Recent Past" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Despite occupying the Caribbean since ca. 6500-6000 BP, Amerindians did not introduce continental animals to the islands until approximately 2000 years ago. In most cases, non-native taxa, while consumed, did not rival local marine resources in dietary importance; yet there is limited evidence to support an...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Eric Fries. John Morris.

A series of exploratory surveys along the northern edge of the Belize River Valley in the area of the Aguacate lagoon has gradually revealed a surprisingly dense distribution of minor centers of the Classic Period Maya. These centers are situated in a zone of intersections, the nature of which shaped their presence in the landscape. Politically, the region lies at an interstice between the spheres of influence of several powerful, well-known polities. Geographically, the site complex is...