Republic of Guatemala (Country) (Geographic Keyword)
1,126-1,150 (2,898 Records)
Social spheres are constituted by population movements. Mobility entails not only the circulation of material goods, but of people, collective imaginary, experiences, flows of information, and knowledge. In this paper, we examine multiple types of movements through the Atacama Desert during the Formative Period (ca. 500 BCE—700 CE). Here, mobility required displacements whose variability included pedestrian travels, the movement of large llama caravans, and the use of sea lion-skin rafts to sail...
Formative Period Mesoamerican Cities and Low Density Urbanism (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Theorizing Prehistoric Large Low-Density Settlements beyond Urbanism and Other Conventional Classificatory Conventions" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Mesoamerica is one of only a handful of places in the ancient world where first-generation cities developed independently, and the lowland Maya cities of the Classic period are frequently cited as prime examples of low-density urbanism. Scholars now recognize that the...
Formative to Postclassic Landuse Changes in the Lower Río Verde Valley, Oaxaca (2017)
We provide a summary of the past ~15 years of paleoecological and paleoenvironmental analysis in the Lower Río Verde Valley. Ten lacustrine, wetland and estuarine sites throughout the valley and coastal zone were selected for sediment coring. The sediments were intensively sampled for a suite of biological and sedimentary analyses chosen to provide insight into changes in local and regional landuse. Our findings indicate initial land clearance and incipient agriculture occurred during the...
Formative-period Izapa Kingdom at Its Neighbors (2017)
Mesoamerica is one of the cradles of civilization where the first kingdoms and states emerged during the latter part of the first millennium BCE. Recent lidar mapping and pedestrian survey documents the extent and internal political structure of the Izapa kingdom from its emergence at 700 BCE through its collapse after 100 BCE. At its peak, a four-tiered political hierarchy maintained internal cohesion and the distribution of large centers around the kingdom’s perimeter established external...
Fortified settlements of the Upper basin of the Sama River (Tacna) during the Late Intermediate Period (1100-1450 AD) (2017)
During the Late Intermediate Period (1100-1450 AD), the upper valleys of Tacna, between Sitajara and Tarata, are known to have been multietnic areas of contacts between coastal and altiplano populations. Our research concerns the fortified settlements, called Pucara, to better understand the cohabitation relationships with different scales: from the study of the fortifications themselves to the territory analysis with the identification of the inhabitants of these fortresses.
Foundations to the Late Classic Kingdom: Copan in the 6th century CE (2017)
Historical and archaeological data support interpretation of Classic Maya polities as centralized states—strongly integrated organizations with stratified and hierarchical political structures led by rulers wielding coercive power. Yet archaeology is often hard pressed to identify changes instigated by individuals or events, or define watershed moments when particular sites or regions coalesced as states. By the early sixth century CE, the kingdom of Copan had established itself as a dominant...
Fowling and Food Security in the Faroe Islands (2018)
Seabird fowling has long played an important role in the traditional domestic economy of the Faroe Islands, a small North Atlantic archipelago. Direct evidence for seabird exploitation in the earliest period of Faroese prehistory has been lacking, however. In this paper, I present new archaeofaunal evidence for substantial and sustained seabird exploitation in the Faroe Islands from the 9th through 13th centuries CE. The data suggest that seabirds represented a significant resource in the...
FRA Cultural Resources Division. (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) Cultural Resources Division is comprised of archeologists, architectural historians, and historians. With responsibility to oversee federally funded and federally authorized projects across the United States. This presentation will provide an overview of FRA’s mission with emphasis on cultural resources...
Fragmented Records: Fuego-Patagonian Hunter-gatherers and Archaeological Change (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Archaeology on the Edge(s): Transitions, Boundaries, Changes, and Causes" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. One common assumption in the interpretation of Fuego-Patagonian archaeological long stratigraphic sequences is that they represent occupational continuity. Several archaeological markers, including chronological and stratigraphic gaps, as well as recent molecular results erode that assumption, inviting us to...
The Frailty-Mortality Paradox: Insights from the Spanish Flu Pandemic of 1918 (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The difficulty of inferring health from skeletal remains is an enduring problem in bioarchaeology. The concept of "frailty" has emerged as a convenient tool for relating observed skeletal lesions to human health and mortality, yet the biases inherent in archaeological samples have left the concept undertheorized. It remains unclear whether frailty should be...
Framing Intent, Power, and Agency in Eastern Honduras (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Advances and New Perspectives in the Isthmo-Colombian Area" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Throughout their history, the polities in eastern Honduras existed along a frontier, interacting with larger, powerful groups from a different cultural tradition to the west and with more closely related people to the south. During the period between 500 and 1200 CE, eastern Honduran groups adopted several significant elements...
Frayed at the Edges: Insights into Classic Period (250–900 CE) Maya Political Organization from the Southeast Maya Kingdom of Copan, Honduras (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Regimes of the Ancient Maya" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. While ongoing research has clarified much about the strategies Classic period (250–900 CE) Maya rulers used to establish, integrate, and administer their Lowland Maya kingdoms, studies of frontier zones, such as the southeast edge of the Maya area, both provide insights into Maya political organization and highlight local challenges not faced by rulers in the...
The French Scientific Mission to South America (1903): the controversies and material legacy of the first extensive excavations in Tiahuanaco, Bolivia (2017)
In the context of a pluridisciplinary mission organized by the French government in Chile, Argentina, Peru and Bolivia in 1903, archaeological excavations were conducted in the monumental site of Tiahuanaco by the naturalist Georges Courty. During his 3-month stay, he conducted extensive fieldwork in the Akapana mound, the Sunken Temple, the Kalasasaya, and the Chunchukala and Putuni structures. The material corpus unearthed is estimated to consist in over 1400 artifacts, later divided between...
Fringe Identities - Costume in the Mixtec Codices (2017)
The Mixtec codices depict costumes from Postclassic Oaxaca, including clothing, face paint, hairstyles, footwear, and jewelry. Contextualized in religious, military, and other social rituals, costume played an important role in framing the action as well as representing individuals in a variety of social identities. This paper focuses on styles and patterns of clothing as they were used to characterize gender, status, ethnicity, occupation, and religious and political roles. Specifically, we...
From "Nation" to "Indio" and "Español": Transitions in Indigenous Culture in the Missions of San Antonio (2018)
The Spanish colonial advance into Texas during the late 17th century resulted in the establishment of several missions to house members of dozens of indigenous groups and a handful of presidios to protect the missions from raiding bands of Comanches and Apaches. The Padres that were in charge of the missions enforced systematic policies and procedures to affect change in the identity of the resident indigenous nations. The policies and procedures specifically targeted religious believes,...
From Carnage to Credentials: An Amerindian Archaeologist’s Journey from Child Laborer to Professor Emeritus (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Hood Archaeologies: Impacts of the School-to-Prison Pipeline on Archaeological Practice and Pedagogy" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. After nine months my mother “broke her water” on 18 June of 1956. Because my father was away, my mother walked the two hours from Stockton through agricultural fields to the hospital in Frenchcamp where I was born. Despite my father’s herculean efforts, we were caught in a seemingly...
From Clovis to Dalton: Key Differences in Hafted Biface Resharpening (2018)
In order to further understand Paleoindian lithic technological organization, we examined blade and haft elements of Clovis, Gainey, and Dalton hafted bifaces. Samples inspected were from across the Midwest, the Southeast, and the Northeast. Due to the rarity of these hafted bifaces, images of individual bifaces were used to take traditional linear measurements on the hafted bifaces in this study. Results indicate key differences in retouch and resharpening patterns throughout the Paleoindian...
From Coast to Coast: Recent Research in Southern Caribbean and Osa Peninsula, Greater Chiriquí Region (2018)
I present new data of investigations conducted in two almost unexplored zones on both coasts (Pacific and Caribbean) of the Greater Chiriquí Region. An exploratory survey, and test pit excavations of selected sites in the southern coast of Caribbean Costa Rica, allowed recording materials similar to those found on the Pacific coast. This reaffirms the proposed extension of related groups on both sides of the Talamanca mountain range. I provide comments about the relationships maintained between...
From compass to LiDAR: 40 years of mapping the Tarascan cities of the Malpaís of Zacapu, Northwestern Mexico. (2017)
Since their discovery in the late XIXth century, the large prehispanic urban settlements located close to the modern town of Zacapu (State of Michoacán, Mexico) have confronted the archaeologists to a great challenge: mapping, and understanding 200 hectares of dense and well preserved urban features founded on the Malpaís of Zacapu (a complex formed by ancient lava flows). Interpreted as premises of the Tarascan State (occupation 1250-1450 AD), these cities constitute an unprecedented regional...
From Cooking to Smelting, the Social Technology of Pyrotechnology of Earth Ovens (2018)
The effects of earth ovens on societies is a topic that has not been consider much, mainly because the limitation of archaeological findings. Because our research has been mainly concentrated in floodplains environments, we have been successful in recovering a large sample that allows to propose explanations on the variability of them, and the relationship that features have in understanding some basic aspects of the social characteristic of the societies that created them. As a study case, we...
From Dune Stratigraphy to a Model-Based Cultural Sequence for the Marquesas Islands of East Polynesia (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Constructing Chronologies I: Stratification and Correlation" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Marquesas Islands comprise part of East Polynesia, a culture area that also includes Hawai'i, New Zealand, and Tahiti. Calcareous sand dunes are rare in the Marquesas but play an outsized role in Polynesian archaeology. Dune sites yield remarkably rich evidence of human settlement and the preservation of organic remains is...
“From Enslavement to Empowerment” and What Comes After: Plantation Futures on a Palimpsestic Landscape (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Deepening Archaeology's Engagement with Black Studies" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The idea of the landscape as a palimpsest, where traces of a former version can be read under the present one, came out of Paleolithic archaeology, where thousands of years of human activity must be read through low-density artifact scatters. In 2013’s “Plantation Futures,” Black geographer Katherine McKittrick describes the...
From Flame to Flowers: Moths and Butterflies in the Codex Borgia Group (2017)
Butterfly imagery in the Borgia Group shows how these volatiles were classified in Postclassic Central Mexico. They are grouped with birds among the 13 "lords of the day" in the Codex Borgia, and they sometimes seem to be interchangeable with moths, especially in imagery of the Fire God. Another god, Ehecatl-Quetzalcoatl, is associated with images of "army worms" devouring maize, symbolizing the caterpillar stage of a moth that distributes its eggs in the wind. Butterfly symbols are naturally...
From Flowers to Sin: Exploration of Sexuality and Gender in Ancient Mesoamerica (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In modernity, sexuality manifests in a dynamic spectrum of expressions which centers on individual sexual awareness, contesting antiquated sentiments of traditional sexual hegemony. In this presentation, we will journey into ancient Mesoamerica in the attempt to conceptualize Maya and Aztec notions of sex and gender by examining various lines of...
From Household to Polity: (Dis)integration along the Ucí-Cansahcab Causeway in the Northern Maya Lowlands (2017)
Over the past decade, the Ucí-Cansahcab Regional Integration Project (UCRIP) has utilized multiples scales of analysis, from broad household excavations to large swathes of LiDAR collection, to examine the social processes of community (dis)integration of a polity in the northern Maya Lowlands. This polity, headed by Ucí, was integrated by an 18-km-long inter-site causeway system by the Terminal Preclassic and connected the emerging regional capital with three secondary sites. Extensive test...