Republic of Guatemala (Country) (Geographic Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Thomas Blennerhassett.

Chicha was consumed in large quantities during social gatherings and feasting events at a number of ceremonial locales including hinterland sites, in the Jequetepeque River Valley, Peru, during the Late Moche. Face-neck jars were used in the brewing and serving of corn beer and depict supernaturals and elite lords with elaborate headdresses and earspools. This research showed the degree to which face-neck jars were standardized in manufacture and design and how this may have contributed to the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cynthia Kristan-Graham.

While H.B. Nicholson’s magnum opus about Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl concentrates on ethnohistory, he acknowledges that some imagery at Chichén Itzá may highlight the feathered serpent’s role as patron. I propose other readings for Kukulcan ("Feathered Serpent" in Yucatecan Maya) at Early Postclassic Chichén Itzá. Linguistic and ethnographic evidence indicates that the feathered serpent symbolizes lineage and ancestry and that rattlesnake physiognomy intersects with fertility. These readings...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Harper Dine. Traci Ardren.

Food as an object of study can reveal relationships between biological necessity, culture, and oppression. The 1996 World Summit on Food Security declared that "food should not be used as an instrument for political and economic pressure," yet archaeology shows myriad ways in which food access was manipulated in the past, and the ramifications of those manipulations. In the Maya area, prestige foods have tended to be the focus of analysis. In this paper, we emphasize the importance of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kathryn Florence.

The Central Mexican city of Teotihuacan rose to prominence in the last century BC and lasted for six centuries The civic plan was arranged around two main perpendicular avenues lined with temples and public monuments. By the third century AD, the population was housed in apartment compounds. On the walls were murals depicting ornately dressed administrators, armor-clad warriors, and fantastic creatures. These murals were the birthplace of the Feathered Serpent. My research proposes that the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Hoopes.

The history of archaeology is replete with assertions about lost tribes, sunken continents, and ancient aliens in the context of failed hypotheses, deliberate hoaxes, and intentional frauds. Williams chronicled these, in the process helping others hone skills in critical thinking. New technologies proliferate spurious explanations of the past that archaeologists must continually address. As the Talmud says, "It is not your responsibility to finish the work of perfecting the world, but you are...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Paula Molloy.

In his 1991 classic, Fantastic Archaeology: The Wild Side of North American Archaeology, Stephen Williams set out to document the ways in which fraud has masqueraded as truth in North American prehistory. More than just a catalog of the improbable and unfalsifiable, Fantastic Archaeology also served as gateway to scientific archaeology for many in the general public. Smitten with a "weird tale," many in the Cambridge, MA area found their way to Prof. Williams’ Harvard University course upon...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Juliet Wiersema.

Throughout the late Spanish colonial period, the Dagua River in Colombia’s Cauca Valley was a multi-cultural backwater. Its shores were inhabited by mestizos, mulattos, slaves, and free slaves, with a minority of Indians and Spaniards. While this area was mined for gold and offered one of few routes to the Pacific from Colombia’s interior, the Dagua River region was largely cut off from global trade and colonial currents due to its geographical remoteness. 50 days distant from Cartagena and 14...

DOCUMENT Citation Only María Albeck. Maria Amalia Zaburlin. Jose Luis Tolaba. Diego Martin Basso. Maria Elena Tejerina.

Pueblo Viejo de Tucute is the southernmost prehispanic (Late Intermediate Period) settlement with altiplanic roots so far recorded. It has nearly 600 dwellings installed in the mountain range southwest from Casabindo in the Puna de Jujuy, an altiplano like highland. The site is unique in the area, with particular architectonic features that differ from contemporaneous sites (Puna de Jujuy, Quebrada de Humahuaca, Valle Calchaquí). The houses are round, well built in cut stone with a diameter that...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Adam Benfer.

Before 1492, the human communities that inhabited the shores of Lake Cocibolca in Central America engaged in dynamic interactions and exchange networks, traveling across the land and canoeing or rafting on the lake and rivers to trade goods and communicate with their neighbors. Evidencing this travel network, archaeological studies have documented an abundance of ceramics and carved stone that the past inhabitants of the Lake Cocibolca region produced and traded widely during the later...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Myra Jean Tuggle.

This is an abstract from the "Research and CRM Are Not Mutually Exclusive: J. Stephen Athens—Forty Years and Counting" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Above the 400 foot sea cliff at Kealakekua Bay on the leeward Kona coast of Hawai‘i are the remnants of extensive pre-Contact Hawaiian agricultural infrastructure. Inventory survey and data recovery on 100-plus acres at the top of the sea cliff provided an opportunity to examine a relatively large...

DOCUMENT Full-Text Jacob Griffith-Rosenberger. Reagan Neviska. Chelsea Katzeman.

Candeleros are simply made ceramic artifacts that consist of one or more cylindrical chambers that are usually circularly arranged and often show signs of burning. These objects are found widely across Mesoamerica though they are rare in most locales. The 100 km2 Naco Valley in northwestern Honduras diverges from this pattern in that: candeleros are frequently found in Terminal Classic (800-1000 CE) assemblages here; they vary in size from items containing a single chamber to others with upwards...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nobutaka Hirahara.

East Cape, the southeastern tip of Papua New Guinea mainland, is one of the pottery production areas in southern Massim. Domestic pottery production has continued to the present day, mainly made by female potters to supply their own needs. However, more extensive pottery production beyond the household level occasionally occurs, especially when funerals (toleha) are held. Toleha are organized by the matrilineal descent group (guguni) of a dead person; the potters who belong the descent group get...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Boyd Dixon. Michael Dega.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Feasting and gift-giving in the ethnography, history, and archaeology of native peoples in Southeast Asia and its islands in the Western Pacific are often given primacy in accounts of academic fieldwork. Some ethnohistoric accounts on the pre-Contact and Spanish Colonial Chamorro people indigenous to Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands of Micronesia also...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Whitney Goodwin.

This is an abstract from the "Ceramics and Archaeological Sciences 2024" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. At the site of Selin Farm (AD 300–1000) in northeastern Honduras, recent research revealed repeated episodes of large-scale feasting occurring over a period of nearly a thousand years leading up to major shifts in local social and political organization (Goodwin 2019; Reeder-Myers et al. 2021). Shell midden mounds at the site contain large...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jeff Kowalski.

This is an abstract from the "Tales of the Feathered Serpent: Refining Our Understanding of an Enigmatic Mesoamerican Being" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. At Uxmal, Yucatán, monumental plumed snakes appear in the sculptural program of the Main Ballcourt and Nunnery Quadrangle. These feathered serpents express complex concepts connected to their pan-Mesoamerican role as a demiurge associated with dawning light, life force, and cosmic order...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Geoffrey McCafferty.

This is an abstract from the "Tales of the Feathered Serpent: Refining Our Understanding of an Enigmatic Mesoamerican Being" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Polychrome pottery from the Greater Nicoya region of Central America prominently features ‘feathery serpents’ that have been associated with the Mixteca-Puebla tradition of greater Mesoamerica. A closer look at the variety of ‘feathery serpents’ has discriminated between more Borgia-like images...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Emily Palus.

This is an abstract from the "In Search of Solutions: Exploring Pathways to Repatriation for NAGPRA Practitioners (Part III)" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Federal agencies and repositories holding federal collections have been bound to curation standards often developed without consideration for nontangible values and needs and a legacy of collecting practices intended to preserve the past yet uninformed by the interests and concerns of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Clarissa Cagnato. Olivia Navarro-Farr. Griselda Pérez Robles. Juan Carlos Pérez Calderón. Damaris Menéndez.

Structure M13-1, a major civic-ceremonial building at the center of the Classic Maya city El Perú-Waka’ in northwestern Petén, Guatemala, held special significance to its citizenry. While it was likely ritually significant since the Early Classic period, evidence indicates it was the focus of sustained and repeated ceremonial acts of likely varying scales, accouterment, and practitioners throughout the Late and Terminal Classic periods (circa A.D. 600-900). In this paper, we explore data from...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Corey Bowen. John Janusek.

A regimented canon of ceramic production emerged at the site of Tiwanaku in the 5th-6th century AD, coinciding with the transformation of the site from a local ritual center to a regional political authority. The highly standardized range of forms and painted imagery it produced presents great potential for an extensive analysis of both complete and fragmented Tiwanaku-style vessels. To date, most analyses of Tiwanaku ceramic vessels have categorically centered on form in order to facilitate...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Emilie LeBrell. Geoffrey G. McCafferty. Sharisse D. McCafferty.

This is an abstract from the "Mesoamerican Figurines in Context. New Insights on Tridimensional Representations from Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Female figurines of the Greater Nicoya region feature a 2000-year history of thematic continuity. During the Formative and Classic periods (locally Tempisque and Bagaces periods), figurines were often red-slipped, nude females in a seated, kneeling or standing position with hands on hips;...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sonia Alconini.

Samaipata was one of the largest centers of the Southeastern Inka frontier. Multifunctional in nature, it was an important advance point toward the tropical lowlands. Despite the intrusions of the Guaraní-Chiriguanos, this region witnessed complex processes of settlement reorganization. This was particularly the case of the fertile valley of Mairana, an important breadbasket of this frontier outpost. Occupied by the Mojocoya and Gray Ware archaeological cultures, their inhabitants produced...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Herve Monterrosa Desruelles.

This is an abstract from the "Approaches to Cultural and Biological Complexity in Mexico at the Time of Spanish Conquest" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. It is well a known fact among researchers that the only confirmed jade deposits in Mesoamerica are found in the middle Motagua Valley in Guatemala. This gem’s brightest shades of green were the most appreciated among Mesoamerican people, yet, barely three hundred objects made with emerald green...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tracy Martens.

In 2008, Chris Carter of the Australian National University (ANU) and Calogero Santoro of Universidad de Tarapacá de Arica (UTA) excavated at Caleta Vitor, located at the coastal mouth of Quebrada Chaca in northern Chile. The site was occupied from at least 13,000 BP through to the Spanish invasion and came to world attention when it was featured on ABC Catalyst (ABC iView , 2009). This research project is aimed at identifying and establishing the provenience of the well preserved textiles and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Harriet "Rae" Beaubien.

The information potential of skeletal remains – as for any excavated material – is impacted by the conditions of archaeological burial, and the environments and actions encountered during subsequent excavation, laboratory processing, study, and storage. A conservation approach emphasizes the mitigation of threats to material stability and integrity, which for excavated collections are often most critical at the point of archaeological exposure and recovery. Techniques and materials in use by...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Helen Henderson.

This is an abstract from the "I Love Sherds and Parasites: A Festschrift in Honor of Pat Urban and Ed Schortman" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper reflects on the singular importance of field school experiences, such as the semester abroad program of Kenyon College, for supporting students as they come to understand the social context of professional life in Latin American Archaeology and their ability to positively contribute to an...