Mortuary Analysis (Other Keyword)
26-50 (190 Records)
This is an abstract from the "The Health and Welfare of Children in the Past" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper will discuss the burials of infants and young children in the earliest Christian cemeteries in Anglo-Saxon England (10th and 11th centuries CE). While in earlier pagan periods the burials of the very youngest members of communities are conspicuous by their paucity, the earliest Christian cemeteries have a much more representative...
Black Rock Mortuary Cairn: A Case Study of Archaeologist–Collector Collaboration (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. An unusual and highly significant Late Prehistoric mortuary feature in eastern Trans-Pecos Texas was discovered in 1992 by a group of relic collectors who carried out an uncontrolled excavation. The feature, which contained 7-9 human interments and over 500 associated objects, consisted of a circular, 6.0 m diameter stacked rock cairn on the summit of a...
The Blown Glass Beads of Garden Bay, British Columbia (2018)
In May 2015, a disturbed burial was uncovered in Garden Bay, British Columbia, within close proximity to the large shíshálh village site of Sexwamin (DjSa-3). Found in association with the burial were 244 intact smooth, unadorned mold-blown (SUMB) glass beads and 40 SUMB glass bead fragments. Due to their extremely fragile nature, blown glass beads are rare in archaeological contexts and the beads from Garden Bay are from one of only five sites in North America where SUMB glass beads have been...
Bronzes, Mortuary Ritual and the Rise of Political Power in the NE Frontier of Ancient China: A case study of Upper Xiajiadian Burials (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Recent Research on Early Chinese Borderland Cultures and Archaeological Materials" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This study focuses on manipulation of bronzes of different styles, and mortuary rituals overall, during in the emergence of political power in the northeastern frontier of ancient China. Data are presented on three richly furnished burials M101 at Nanshan’gen and M8501 and M9601 at Xiaoheishigou of the...
The Burial Ground at Otstonwakin: Native American Mortuary Practices in 18th Century Pennsylvania (2018)
The multinational village of Otstonwakin was a key nexus of colonial and indigenous interaction where colonial identities were expressed as well as constituted through material remains. The sacred landscape that was used by the residents of Otstonwakin to bury their dead was disturbed by road construction projects in both the late 1800s and early 1900s. While the full extent of the cemetery associated with Otstonwakin is unknown, the burial ground is represented by four documented graves and a...
Burials and Society at Teotihuacan: Examining Inequality Through Burial Offerings in Residential Contexts (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Many archaeologists think that Teotihuacan was a relatively equalitarian society. Prior research on economic inequity has focused on factors such as the size of houses and the remains of murals in residential complexes. The Burials and Society project approaches the question of inequality at Teotihuacan from a new angle, that of burial data. The project has...
Bury Me with Beads (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ground stone disk beads represented a tangible signal of wealth within the Salish Sea archaeological record; they appeared continuously from 7,000 – 500 BP across the region in scattered frequencies to massive caches. The massive caches were often observed in a burial context, despite non-burial contexts being more frequent and wide-spread. The differences in...
Caches, Burials, and Vases, Oh My: Ritual Deposits in an Elite Courtyard at the Ancient Maya Site of Pacbitun, Belize (2018)
Recent investigations in a large, enclosed courtyard on the southwest corner of the ancient Maya site of Pacbitun, Belize, revealed evidence of successive emplacements of ritually important deposits. Initial analysis of the ceramic material suggests that the entire courtyard plaza has only one or two floors, with construction and use only during the Late to Terminal Classic period (600 – 900 CE). Five caches and two cyst graves were related directly to the plaza floor. The caches consisted...
Cemeteries of Enslaved Communities in Granville County, North Carolina (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Lewis and Elmwood cemeteries are the final resting places of enslaved individuals from two antebellum plantations in Granville County, North Carolina. Archaeological investigations show both cemeteries share many of the characteristics typical of Black cemeteries beginning in the antebellum era and continuing into the postbellum period. In much of North...
Chincha-Inka Mortuary Traditions at Jahuay, Quebrada de Topará (2019)
This is an abstract from the "From the Paracas Culture to the Inca Empire: Recent Archaeological Research in the Chincha Valley, Peru" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The site of Jahuay, located 20 km north of the Chincha Valley, was first occupied during the Early Horizon as a commoner fishing community. In later eras, it was reoccupied by the Chincha and Inka, possibly as a tambo. During the 2017 and 2018 field seasons, the Proyecto de...
Chornancap: Palacio y Mausoleo de la Gobernante y de la Cultura Lambayeque, Perú (2018)
Las investigaciones en Chotuna Chornancap – Lambayeque – Perú, pusieron a la luz el hallazgo de contextos funerarios de personajes de élite, uno de ellos correspondiente a una "Gobernante y Sacerdotisa" de la fase Tardía de la cultura Lambayeque (XII-XIIId.C). El fardo funerario de la gobernante/sacerdotisa enterrado con ocho acompañantes, ornamentos de alto rango, poder y autoridad, han permitido documentar una de las más conspicuas autoridades políticas y religiosas de la cultura Lambayeque....
Colonial Funerary Rituals at the Templo San Ignacio in Bogotá, Colombia (2018)
This research analyzes the funerary customs in the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries as recovered through archaeological exploration in the Jesuit church named Templo San Ignacio in downtown Bogotá, Colombia. These skeletal remains illustrate how from the moment the church was constructed in 1610, the deposition of the deceased beneath the floor was an integral part of the occupation of this sacred space on the periphery of the Spanish colonial empire. While we recovered human remains from...
Color patterns and aspects of significance in the Paracas Necropolis (2016)
Anne Paul (1998) observed that the Paracas Necropolis embroiderers seem to explore all possible color repeat patterns in their mantle design. At the same time, a few dominant color combinations recur throughout the assemblage. Like speech, color is a system of difference, hues perceived relationally through contrast with those adjacent. Dyed color is produced by chemical processes on natural fiber with pre-existing tones, and changes over time in diverse environmental conditions. These factors...
Concern for the Living, Care for the Dead: Non-adult Burial at the Early Christian cemetery of St Patrick’s Chapel, Pembrokeshire (2018)
Recent excavations below the ruins of a 13th–16th AD century chapel dedicated to St Patrick, at Whitesands Bay, Pembrokeshire in southwest Wales revealed ninety well-preserved burials dating to the 7th–11th century AD. There was an unusually high concentration of non-adults buried at the site, including a number of foetuses and infants. Some of these young individuals received elaborate burial forms, including the use of quartz-topped burials and cross-inscribed grave markers. It is necessary to...
Continuity and Change: What the Late Intermediate Period at Pisanay Can Tell Us About Middle Horizon Arequipa (2018)
Data from excavations at the site of Pisanay, a Late Intermediate Period "sanctuary" with some remains of Early Intermediate Period ceremonialism, can be used to frame a sort of "before and after" picture of Middle Horizon developments in the Sihuas Valley of Arequipa and the changing nature of cultural ties to the region. Most striking of these is the shifting pattern of materials ties impacted by the intervening influence of the Wari cultural horizon, seen in the ceramics and textiles...
Cosmopolitics and Community Reformation in Middle Horizon Jequetepeque (2021)
This is an abstract from the "A New Horizon: Reassessing the Andean Middle Horizon (AD 600–1000) and Rethinking the Andean State" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In his analysis of Shang authority structures, Campbell attacks the search for ancient states in the archaeological record as founded on “an illusory and anachronistic projection of modern political contingencies” (2009:821). Indeed, a narrow focus on rational leadership strategies or the...
Creations of the Lord: New World Slavery and Sacrifice (2018)
In the ancient cities of Ur and Chan Chan, excavations revealed that when a lord died, dozens of servants were sometimes put to death and buried with the lord. Such examples of retainer sacrifice, also mentioned for Aztec kings and documented in Maya tombs, raise questions about slavery, violence, and subjectivity. David Graeber has argued that slavery played a key role in the origin of commercial systems. The transition at issue concerns the melding of human economies (which make and remake...
Cross-Cultural Examination of Mortuary Practices of the Southern Sinagua and Prescott Culture (2016)
The burials from the Oak Creek Valley Pueblo and the Dewey Archaeological sites provide data for interpreting the mortuary practices and burial rituals of the Southern Sinagua and Prescott cultures. The variability exhibited in the burials uncovered at these sites, which include the remains of an adult male, two adult females, infant burials, and one dog, allows for an examination of mortuary practices as they relate to social structure and the role of children, symbolism, environmental...
Culture and its varations - A community focused study of Siwa and Western Zhou cemeteries in Gansu (2016)
For his last SAA paper, Professor Chen Pochan talked about the Dian Yangfutou cemetery in Yunnan. He presented the results of an analysis that provided new meaning on its social structure. The Dian culture was an important entity on the periphery of the Warring States and early Han world, but apart from several references in Chinese historical documents little is known, but much is assumed, about them. Chen's study complemented previous Dian mortuary research with site-specific practices in...
Death after Inka Expansion: Analyses of a Secondary Communal Burial at Las Huacas, Chincha Valley (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Developments through Time on the South Coast of Peru: In Memory of Patrick Carmichael" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Mortuary Practices are political acts that are deeply embedded in political and social interactions. Complex N1 at the site of Las Huacas was the location of various burials during the Late Horizon (AD 1470–1532) and, possibly, early colonial period (AD 1532–1570). One such burial, was a large communal...
Death and Identity at Monte Albán (2018)
Archaeologists have long striven to interpret mortuary rituals as qualitative signs of a living people--indices of sex, gender, age, status, wealth, and craft. Though the doctrine "as in life, so in death" can have some merit for archaeological inquiry, viewing mortuary ritual in this manner ignores the social act itself, which is one of the most intimate, personal, and weighted actions humans produce, serving, among other roles, to return the society to homeostasis in the wake of the loss of a...
Death and Taxes in the Ancient Assyrian Empire: Pictures of Wealth Inequality in Provincial Settlements (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The study of mortuary material in archaeology has always related to subjects of identity, beliefs, and resources. Furthermore, it is one of our prime resources for understanding non-elite individuals in the premodern world, especially in societies where historical sources revolve around the ruling elites. This is certainly the case in the ancient Assyrian...
Death and the Origin of Enduring Social Relations (2017)
Knowledge of Formative Period Mesoamerican archaeological sites often comes from narrow windows into buried sites. One feature has been a partial exception to this rule: burials. Groups of Formative Period burials, often accompanied by objects, have been recovered in many parts of Mesoamerica. Using models of mortuary treatment that saw burials as reflecting individual identity, burials provided one of the first ways researchers could examine the emergence of stratification within these...
Death in the City: Huari Urban Tombs (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Seeing Wari through the Lens of the Everyday: Results from the Patipampa Sector of Huari" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. After declaring tombs to be absent from the Patipampa archaeological record on the basis of our 2017 excavations, this presentation discusses two mortuary contexts discovered at the Middle Horizon (AD 600-1000) site of Patipampa in the capital city of Huari. Excavated during our 2018 field season,...
Demographic Change through Analysis of Age Profiles of Burial Data (2018)
A series of mortuary sites on the Texas Coastal Plain provide a dataset useful for analyzing demographic change through examination of age profiles. Other archaeological data suggest that populations peaked during the Late Archaic period (4000-800 BP) and sharply declined during the Late Prehistoric period (800-350 BP). Analysis of the ratio of adults to young individuals has been used to identify rapid population growth among other populations. Hunter-gatherer groups living in the Texas...