Mortuary Analysis (Other Keyword)
101-125 (190 Records)
This paper explores how people within Neolithic villages were potentially connected to co-resident multi-family households, and considers the potential material footprint of multi-family households within Neolithic villages. As seen from ethnographic cases, in some cases residential buildings of House Societies had a range of functions including as dwelling locations, origin-places, council houses, or meeting-houses. Echoing other research this paper decouples the social unit of the House from a...
Materiality of Amerindian Human Bodies in the Mouth of the Amazon River: Life and Death at the Curiaú Mirim I Site, Around the Second Millennium AD (2019)
This is an abstract from the "From Individual Bodies to Bodies of Social Theory: Exploring Ontologies of the Americas" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. These paper aims to show an osteobiographical approach to read human bodies like a special kind of material culture which was inspired by the concepts of Amerindian ideas of construction of bodies and persons in the interpretation of the data analyzed. The Curiaú Mirim site is formed by funerary...
Materializing Aksumite: Power Plays through Natural Landscape in the Northern Stelae Field (AD 100–400) (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Materializing Political Ecology: Landscape, Power, and Inequality" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper looks at how the location of the central stelae field in Aksum (in use from ~AD 100–400) took advantage of natural features to amplify Indigenous ideologies. The Northern Stelae Field is the burial location of the most powerful Aksumites, and tradition dictates that at least some were kings. The stelae field is...
Maya Funerary Practices and Their Significance in Reproducing and Maintaining Social Status and Identity: Evidence from Copan, Honduras, and Palenque, Mexico (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Susan Gillespie remarked the importance of human body and funerary ritual in the process of transmission of memory and legitimation of social status among Maya royalty. Would this process be visible in domestic contexts, too? To answer this question, I chose to study domestic funerary record, context where an archaeologist can find the reflection of collective...
Maya Ossuaries: Body Processing and Collective Memory in the Terminal Classic (2018)
The allocation of space for the deceased is an integral component of understanding the relationship between a community and its mortuary practices. This paper explores how Maya ossuaries, or deposits with the commingled remains of multiple individuals, form a distinct body processing method that increases in frequency during the Terminal and Postclassic period in the Northern Maya lowlands. Data from salvage excavations of a Terminal Classic disturbed ossuary in the archaeological zone of...
Memory and Resilience after the Collapse of the Wari Empire: Analysis from the Remains of Home and Funerary Contexts (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. During the last 5 years a team of researchers from the National University of San Cristobal de Huamanga has been carrying out archaeological research in the sectors of Vegachayuq Moqo, Capillapata, Chupapata, and Cerro San Cristobal in the capital of the Wari Empire. The results obtained show an occupation sequence from the Huarpa period (emergence of the...
A Methodology for Comparing and Evaluating Seriation Algorithms Applied to Archaeological Data (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. According to recent literature, correspondence analysis is the method of choice for frequency seriation. However, this does not consider the effects of data heterogeneity or typology on the orderings produced by this method. This relates to a more fundamental issue of how to evaluate the effects of heterogeneity and typology on seriation results, as well as...
The Middle Horizon Period at Ancón: A Reassessment (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ancón, Peru represents one of the largest pre-Colombian cemeteries in the Andes. Discoveries of more than three thousand burials spanning the length of Andean history cement Ancón’s continuous role as an important location to commemorate the dead. Less clear, however, is whether Ancón supported a concurrent residential population throughout this time,...
Migration, Monuments, and Memory in Fifth-Century Britain (2018)
The fifth century in Britain is one of dramatic cultural, social, and economic change, transforming the late-Roman communal landscape into one dominated by Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. These changes have often been attributed to the collapse of the Roman Empire or the arrival of immigrants from the continent. This paper uses ArcGIS, isotopic studies, and multivariate statistics to investigate the relationship between where people came from, where they chose to bury their dead, and what they sent with...
Migration, Ritual, and the Dead (2018)
Migration of human populations is an ancient and persistent part of the history of humankind. In the past, as in the present, migration continues to be a solution to human problems that carries with it some degree of increased risk and challenges for group and individual security and identity. Vulnerability resulting from migration choices, and practices to mitigate risks of that vulnerability, vary between historically situated populations and within groups by age, gender, and other elements of...
A Miniature Brooch and Gaming Pieces: The Story of the Smaller Objects from the Late Iron Age Elite Burials of Southern England (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Small Things Unforgotten" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Two iron firedogs, a tripod for a cauldron, a small amphora of Graeco Italian type, a bronze jug, glass vessels and Samian dishes. These are the objects selected for a catalogue record and for inclusion in the historic museum display of the 30 or so objects discovered in a Late Iron Age burial at Stanfordbury, Bedfordshire in southern England. But what about the...
The Missing Years: Continuity and/or Change in Woodland Funerals in the LIV (2018)
Lynne Goldstein has significantly advanced knowledge of ancient peoples in many theoretical and empirical domains, including her seminal studies of ancient cemeteries, especially their spatial organization and interpretation through the judicious use of ethnographic sources, critically evaluated. The senior author has had the pleasure of collaborating with Dr. Goldstein in several of these ventures, some under challenging conditions of heat and cold, which were bearable only due to Lynne’s...
The Mochicas under the Lambayeque Rule (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Them and Us: Transmission and Cultural Dynamism in the North of Peru between AD 250 and 950: A Vision since the Recent Northern Investigations" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent studies have revealed that the Lambayeque society, primarily during the Middle Sicán period (AD 900–1100), was highly stratified and multiethnic. It is now inferred that the society was governed by a federation of the Lambayeque elite...
Modeling Late Prehistoric Mortuary Practice in the Middle Chincha Valley, Peru (2018)
This paper presents a model for mortuary practices associated with above-ground and semi-subterranean tombs known as chullpas, which date from the Late Intermediate Period (A.D. 1000-1400) to the Colonial Period (A.D. 1532 - 1825) in the middle Chincha Valley, Peru. Mortuary practices involve living-dead interactions that transform the status of the deceased. Historical sources and archaeological research suggest that chullpas in the south-central Andean highlands featured protracted living-dead...
Morhiss and Buckeye Knoll Cemetery Sites: A Comparison of Hunter-Gatherer Mortuary Chronologies and Traditions (2023)
This is an abstract from the "The Socioecological Dynamics of Holocene Foragers and Farmers" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Located on the Guadalupe River in Victoria County, Texas, Morhiss (41VT1) and Buckeye Knoll (41VT98) represent two of the oldest and largest hunter-gatherer cemeteries in the United States. Recent accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) dating of 90 burials at the Morhiss site offers unique insights into its mortuary complex. AMS...
A Mortuary Analysis of Adult and Child Burials of Río Viejo, Oaxaca, Mexico (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Mortuary practices are symbolically charged activities that vary depending on wealth, religion, manner of death, and even age. Recent excavations of the site of Río Viejo, Oaxaca, Mexico, suggest similar burial practices between adults and children during the Early Postclassic (AD 800–1100) and Late Classic (AD 500–800). The current understanding of burial...
Mortuary analysis of juvenile burials in the sacristy of a Spanish colonial reducción in the southern highlands of Peru (2017)
Mortuary practices at Spanish colonial sites in Latin America varied in terms of burial location, style of burial, and associated grave goods. Understanding burial practices is one way to investigate shifting identities, conversion to Catholicism, and the degree of control over and involvement of priests in daily life at colonial sites. The mortuary practices at the reducción (planned colonial town) of Santa Cruz de Tuti (today known as Mawchu Llacta, Colca Valley, Peru) reveal nuanced insights...
Mortuary Analysis of St. Joseph Sanatorium, Albuquerque, New Mexico: A Multidisciplinary Approach (2018)
In 1984-1985 several sets of human remains were inadvertently discovered at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Albuquerque, New Mexico. These remains were excavated by the University of New Mexico and the Office of Contract Archaeology. In all a total of 12 individuals were excavated from this previously forgotten cemetery. St. Joseph’s Hospital was established by the Sisters of Mercy in 1902 as a tuberculosis sanitarium for well-heeled clients to rest and recuperate in what was then thought of as one of...
Mortuary Customs at a Small Pueblo II Habitation Site in the Chuska Valley, New Mexico (2019)
This is an abstract from the "The Navajo-Gallup Water Supply Project: A Multivocal Analysis of the San Juan Basin as a Cultural Landscape" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent data recovery investigations conducted by PaleoWest Archaeology as part of the Navajo-Gallup Water Supply Project uncovered four human burials at a small Ancestral Puebloan residential site (NM-Q-14-104) located in the Chuska Valley area of northwest New Mexico....
Mortuary Patterns of a 18th Century Cemetery on Sint Eustatius (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Exploring Globalization and Colonialism through Archaeology and Bioarchaeology: An NSF REU Sponsored Site on the Caribbean’s Golden Rock (Sint Eustatius)" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Little is known about the mortuary patterns of enslaved and freed Africans during the 18th to early 19th century on the Dutch Caribbean island of Sint Eustatius. Excavation and analysis of burials from a small 18th century cemetery...
Mortuary Practices of the Vanished Medieval Village of Gać in Poland (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Life and Death in Medieval Poland" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper is focused on the results of three seasons of archeological excavation in the vanished village of Gać, located in the central part of Greater Poland. More than 300m2 of the medieval cemetery were examined, revealing 159 burials. The vast majority of the dead were buried according to the Catholic rite. However, a few deviated significantly...
Mortuary Practices, Production and Exchanges in the Borderland: A Case Study from the Bukhara Oasis (Uzbekistan) (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper investigates potteries excavated from the Late Iron Age kurgan burials (i.e., burials with an aboveground mound) at the fringes of the Bukhara oasis in present-day central Uzbekistan. Connecting the intensively farmed river oasis and the desert steppe, the border of Bukhara oasis as a frontier zone was also an arena in which complex social and...
A Multidisciplinary Approach to Inca Resettlement in the Andes (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Thinking Big in the Andes: Papers in Honor of Charles Stanish" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. We employ a novel multidisciplinary approach to test the Inca (ca. 1400–1532 CE) policy of forced resettlement (mitma) in the Chincha Valley, Peru. This political strategy significantly transformed the Andean demographic landscape, but it has only been proposed based on intriguing yet ambiguous written sources and...
My Heart in Their Hand: Inferring Psychosocial Stress from a Mass Child Sacrifice, Pampa La Cruz, Peru (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Child sacrifice has been practiced by many ancient societies over time although archaeological evidence is often lacking. Scholars have attempted to investigate the motivations behind intentional state-sanctioned killings; however, the missing archaeological context leaves these interpretations up for debate. Outside of modern-day Trujillo, recent excavations...
Necrontology: Housing the Dead in Precontact Labrador and Greenland (2019)
This is an abstract from the "From Individual Bodies to Bodies of Social Theory: Exploring Ontologies of the Americas" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Conventional treatment of the dead varied substantially across the Inuit world. Bodies might be deposited in carefully constructed cairns next to settlements or more simply exposed on the land or sea ice. It also varied locally depending on understandings of the afterlife, how individuals were...