SV (ISO Country Code) (Geographic Keyword)
26-30 (30 Records)
In this opening paper for the session in honor of Stephen Kowalewski we talk about Steve’s life and background, his experience in Southwestern and Mesoamerican archaeology, and about a life of teaching and mentoring in the classroom and in the field. We discuss Stephen Kowalewski’s work in archaeology and the rich regional datasets that we now enjoy as a result of his teachings and labors. This presentation also reflects on the theoretical and methodological approaches that Steve has employed...
Stop and Go Traffic: Power, Movement, and Emplacement in the Piedras Negras and Yaxchilan Kingdoms (2015)
This paper explores the many sides of the natural and supernatural landscape surrounding the Classic period Maya kingdoms of Piedras Negras and Yaxchilan with a particular focus on how the rulers of these polities struggled with one another for control of movement across the broken terrain of hills, cliffs, valleys, swamps, and rivers that define the Middle Usumacinta River basin. The standard image of a rather homogenous landscape in the Maya lowlands is quickly dispensed with in the Middle...
Through a Smoke Cloud Darkly: The Possible Social Significance of Candeleros in Terminal Classic Naco Valley Society (2015)
Candeleros, fired clay artifacts with one to over 20 chambers, are widely distributed across Terminal Classic (AD 800-1000) contexts in the Naco valley of northwestern Honduras. Though reported from other parts of Mesoamerica, little is known about the varied ways this distinctive artifact figured in tasks engaged in by people of diverse ranks and might have been used in negotiating interpersonal transactions. This presentation provides initial responses to these queries based on a functional...
A Variety of Cerendipitous Discoveries (2015)
Research at the Ceren village archaeological site in 2013 and 2014 has made a variety of discoveries. The plant casts, made by pouring dental plaster into the voids, reveal much about agriculture in the middle of the rainy season some 1400 years ago. The maize plants were doubled over to dry the mature ears, but the Loma Caldera eruption occurred just before planting squash and beans. So what was that single mature squash plant doing in the milpa? What are the limits of preservation of weeds,...
Wearing Culture: Dress and Regalia in Early Mesoamerica and Central America (2014)
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...