Mortuary Analysis (Other Keyword)
151-175 (190 Records)
In this paper, we discuss the mortuary tradition affiliated with the Ramada communities that inhabited the Vitor Valley of Southern Peru around 550 CE. Our field excavations in 2012 and 2015 revealed a long-standing tradition of mortuary treatment that persisted even after the arrival of the Wari in the area. While many components of this tradition appear to have originated locally, other components closely parallel Nazca populations, including patterns of trauma, funerary ritual and the...
Reconfiguring Normative Funeral Rite in European Prehistory: Second Thoughts on Secondary Manipulation of Human Remains (2018)
Mortuary variability in European prehistory has long been perceived through the lens of Christian worldview from which the discipline of archaeology originally developed. Expectations rooted in this conceptual perspective inevitably shaped the ways that the archaeological record was approached and interpreted. As a case study we consider the Central European Bronze Age, on which we can deconstruct the traditional ‘textbook’ understanding of ancient funerary traditions. During this period,...
Reconsideration of the Relationship between Complex Societies and Dolmen in Northern Part of Korea and Manchuria (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Dolmen is one of the principal mortuary programs in the Korean Bronze Age (ca. between 1000 and 300 B. C.). A number of dolmens have been discovered almost everywhere in the Korean peninsula as well as Manchuria, China. A great amount of research has been conducted by Korean and Japanese archaeologists concerning this style of burial. Some scholars became...
Recovering Lost Excavations: Reconstructing Burials from the University of California Excavations at Guatacondo, Chile (1967–1969) (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. As part of a Chile-California accord in the 1960s, UCLA faculty, graduate students, and a number of Chilean archaeologists excavated the site of Guatacondo. This relationship ended abruptly following the schism of US/Chile relations pursuant to the election of Salvador Allende. At that point, Dr. Meighan returned to his position at UCLA, bringing with him...
Regional Comparison of Ritual Closure in American Southwest (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeologists in the North American Southwest and other regions recognize that ritual closure of structures reveals information about relations with ancestors, fear of dangerous forces, and other interactions between spiritual and material realms. We want to understand how such ceremonies might differ through time or place. Perhaps they form regional...
Remaking the Mazeway: Pueblo Bonito House Society, Redux, at Wallace Ruin (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In contrast to the ubiquitous Ancestral Pueblo practice of residential burial, at least 32 deceased were transported 10 kilometers or more for deposition within the Wallace Ruin great house. This Chacoan outlier, situated near Mesa Verde, Colorado was a ritual-economic center c. AD 1060-1150. Upon the collapse of the Chacoan system, habitation of this...
The Renewal of Remembrance and Political Order: an Example from the Late Shang, China (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The role played by the remembrance of certain events and/or individuals in the reproduction of social order and power relations has been investigated from various social archaeological perspectives. One of the important issues emerging out of this developing research area is how a specific mode of such remembrance is related to a specific mode of social/power...
Resting in Meaning: Symbolism from St. Henry’s Cemetery (11S1742), East St. Louis, IL, 1866–1908 (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. St. Henry’s Catholic Cemetery (11S1742), located in East St. Louis, IL, was in use between 1866 and 1908 and mainly served the surrounding German and Irish communities. Despite repeated claims of full relocation since its closure, the presence of burials on site has been debated. However, recent excavations reveal a likely large number of burials were...
Review on Archaeological Studies of Sogdian Tombs in China (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Populations of Early Medieval China: Developing Anthropological Approaches to Historical Archaeology in China" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This presentation will examine Chinese scholars’ archaeological studies toward sinicized Sogdian tombs and relevant discoveries in China during the past 20 years and try to seek its logic, in the meantime, and also its disadvantage and possible breakthrough in the future.
Ridges, Valleys, Mountains, and Plateaus: The Topographic Context of Late Mississippian Diversity in East Tennessee (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Living and Dying in Mountain and Highland Landscapes" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Topographical constraints played a role in shaping the social trajectory of the Southern Appalachian region. The Ridge and Valley physiographic province of East Tennessee includes the Tennessee River and is characterized by linear ridges and parallel valleys, with the Blue Ridge Mountains to the east and the Appalachian Plateau...
Ritual Sites as Anchors in a Dynamic Landscape: The Social and Economic Importance of Monumental Cemeteries Built by Eastern Africa’s Earliest Herders (2018)
In eastern Africa, herding was the earliest form of food production, supplanting fishing-hunting-gathering around Lake Turkana (northwest Kenya) ca. 5000-4000 BP. Fueled by the dramatic recession of Lake Turkana 5300-3900 BP, which made fishing less predictable and exposed vast plains of rich pasture near the lake, early herding probably involved both in-migration of pastoralists and adoption of livestock by local fishers. As herding took hold a mortuary tradition developed, with megalithic...
The Roman Basilica at Freixo, Portugal: Ongoing Excavations and Current Interpretations Regarding the Role and Regional Significance of this Hinterland Community (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Excavations at Freixo, Portugal, continue to provide substantive data regarding the nature of Roman Imperial organization and decline in the southern Iberian Peninsula. Of specific interest is the role of hinterland communities within the overarching sociopolitical and ideological landscape. Recent discoveries at the Freixo Basilica suggest material...
Sacrifice and the Skeleton: Mortuary Archaeology at Los Guachimontones (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This presentation examines the mortuary practices in excavated burials at Late Formative and Early Classic (300 BCE–400 CE) Los Guachimontones in Jalisco, Mexico. This site, with features such as shaft tombs and circular public architecture, is exemplary of the unusual regional cultural tradition of ancient West Mexico. An analysis of the mortuary remains...
Scioto Hopewell Concepts of Soul-Like Essences in Humans: Mortuary Evidence in Light of Historic Woodland and Plains Native American Concepts (2016)
Scioto Hopewell conceptions of soul-like essences in humans are evident in the systematic placements of grave goods of particular kinds at particular bodily locations of inhumations, and with insights from comparative information on historic Woodland and Plains Native Americans. Analysis of 284 burials from 11 Scioto Hopewell cemeteries indicates a recognition of one "free" journeying soul and multiple "body" souls; their bodily residences, locations of exit upon death, and likely directions...
Sensorial and Transformative Qualities of Caves among the Lucayan-Taíno of the Bahamas (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Advances in the Archaeology of the Bahama Archipelago" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Caves act as the mythological archetype and physical portals that validate the cosmogony-cosmology-eschatology spectrum of many past and present human societies. Among the prehistoric Lucayan-Taíno of the Bahamas, caves played an important role in both validating perceptions of the cosmos, but also the maintenance of ancestral...
Shaft Tombs in the Caddo World (2016)
Shaft tombs are an interesting McCurtain Phase (1300-1700 ACE) mortuary ritual in the Caddo region. The tombs are dug into the center of preexisting mounds and around 8-10 individuals are supine, primarily interred, and facing the same direction. The shaft tombs could have been constructed as a revitalization ceremony after a period of abandonment from a site. Alternatively, the tombs could have functioned as a termination event at the end of an occupation for these sites. However, the purpose...
Shell Jewelry Exchange and Social Status in Central Sonora (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Crossing Boundaries: Interregional Interactions in Pre-Columbian Times" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The archaeological site of El Cementerio, dated between the Middle and Late Sonoran Ceramic Period (circa AD 1000-1521) and located in central Sonora along the Yaqui River, displays several characteristics suggestive of closer links to West Mexican coastal settlements including the presence of shell jewelry and...
Shells at Death – The Use of Shells in Neolithic Mortuary Contexts (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Culturing the Body: Prehistoric Perspectives on Identity and Sociality" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Shells constituted a cultural resource for human groups throughout history. As such, they were used and incorporated in different aspects of life – and death. In this study we examine the use of shells in mortuary contexts, focusing on the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (PPNB) cultic/mortuary site of Kfar HaHoresh....
Six Impossible Things before Breakfast: Understanding Space and Place at the Milwaukee County Poor Farm Cemetery (2018)
From 1878 through 1974 Milwaukee County utilized four locations on the Milwaukee County Grounds for burial of more than 7,000 individuals, primarily paupers, the institutionalized, and the unidentified. Two archaeological excavations in 1991 and 1992 and again in 2013 resulted in the recovery of over 2,400 individuals from one of those cemetery locations. A comprehensive understanding of the spatial organization and use life of this site has been complicated by the cemetery’s history of...
Snake Queens and Political Consolidation: How Royal Women Helped Create Kaanul—A View from Waka’ (2021)
This is an abstract from the "New Light on Dzibanché and on the Rise of the Snake Kingdom’s Hegemony in the Maya Lowlands" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Our paper demonstrates the key role played by royal women of the Kaanul realm in fortifying and consolidating that realm’s power and hegemony in the seventh to eighth centuries CE. We draw upon archaeological, visual, and textual evidence from Waka’, including preliminary analysis of recently...
Social Life and Social Death among Cape Slaves (2018)
A central imperative in historical archaeology is to produce original information and insights that cannot be derived from historical records. Sophisticated analyses of slave burials that combine the physical elements of burial grounds, coffins, and grave goods, with the biology and chemical signatures of the human remains, can identify and source first-generation slaves, and help to infer the social bonds reflected in their burial. Orlando Patterson has defined slavery as "social death" to...
Socio-Economic Class Status and Health on the Roman Danube: Skeletal Indicators and Mortuary Treatment at Late Antique Viminacium (2018)
Cross-culturally and through time, anthropologists have found that--within hierarchical societies--elites tend to manage resources and allocate risk primarily to their own benefit. There is little reason to believe that Late Roman Imperial frontier elites would have behaved any differently. This paper examines the archaeological relationship between biological 'stress' or health--as inferred from skeletal remains--and socio-economic status / class--as evaluated on the basis of mortuary...
Subadult Human Sacrifices in Midnight Terror Cave (2016)
Children throughout Mesoamerica were preferred sacrificial victims, especially to water deities. Because caves were associated with rain, ethnohistoric sources mention the sacrifice of children in caves. The importance of children in sacrifice was documented early on by Edward Thompson’s dredging of the Cenote of Sacrifice at Chichen Itza. More recently archaeological investigations of caves have recovered and identified the skeletal remains of children that have been interpreted as sacrificial...
Sunset Crater Archaeology: The History of a Volcanic Landscape, Stone, Shell, Bone, and Mortuary Analyses (2006)
The U.S. 89 Archaeological Project investigated 41 prehistoric sites located approximately 30 km north of Flagstaff, Arizona. All sites were on Coconino National Forest (CNF) land, specifically the Peaks Ranger District. The project was conducted hy Desert Archaeology, Inc., personnel for the Arizona Department of Transportation (ADOT) prior to widening and improvement of 26.7 km (16.6 miles) of U.S. 89, between the southern boundary of Wupatki National Monument in the north, and the town of...
Symbolic and Iconographic Perspectives on the Burials from Mound 2 at the Hopewell Site (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Dancing through Iconographic Corpora: A Symposium in Honor of F. Kent Reilly III" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This presentation explores the significance of the Middle Woodland burials found on the lower floor under Mound 2 at the Hopewell Earthworks, including their grave goods, mortuary furniture, spatial patterning, and postmortem treatment. It investigates how certain aspects of these burials’ ceremonial...