Republic of Guatemala (Country) (Geographic Keyword)
1,201-1,225 (2,898 Records)
This paper considers the assumptions, limitations, and greater implications that a theory of integration-disintegration has for analyzing social change across space and time. It reviews the historical foundations of the concept of integration as it emerged in enlightenment social theory and considers how the concept of integration has been repeatedly and uncritically co-opted into various discourses of archaeological theory. An alternative framework for thinking about social change will be...
Gift of the Gods: A Mashup of the History of Mesoamerican Avocados (2023)
This is an abstract from the "An Exchange of Ideas: Recent Research on Maya Commodities" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The earliest avocados of the Americas were dispersed by extinct megafauna, and later by human populations, including Olmec, Maya, and Aztecs peoples. Prized for their flavor and rich caloric content, avocados were portrayed on Maya king’s tombs, served as the municipal symbol of ancient Mesoamerican cities, as a month in the Maya...
The Gilded Age in Eastern Yucatán, Mexico: the Age of Betrayal or the Rise of the Middle Class? (2015)
The social transformations produced by rapid industrialization and expansion of henequen production in the late nineteenth century in western Yucatan were not what happened in Maya-speaking communities further to the east. The Gilded Age in eastern Yucatan was attenuated because communities suffered the protracted aftershocks of the Caste War of Yucatan (1847-1901), which may have repressed wealth disparities instead of heightening them. In this paper, I examine the archaeology of haciendas and...
GINI and the Indigenous Critique: Dynamics of Equality and Inequality in Eastern North America (2023)
This is an abstract from the "To Have and Have Not: A Progress Report on the Global Dynamics of Wealth Inequality (GINI) Project" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this paper we utilize the systemic, empirically driven methodology developed by the Global Dynamics of Wealth Inequality (GINI) project in order to evaluate and compare differences in wealth accumulation for Indigenous eastern North American societies. These societies were predominantly...
A GIS Analysis of Production Areas, Ritual Spaces, and Socioeconomics at the Mixed Inka-Local Administrative Center of Turi, Northern Chile (2017)
While anthropologists are often concerned with profiling the socioeconomic character of the cultures they study, this task can be challenging for archaeological researchers investigating long-abandoned settlements. Intrasite socioeconomic reconstructions in particular may depend upon such factors as the accurate detection of specific production activities and the partitioning of architectural features into socially informative categories. This paper presents a case study on this topic wherein...
GIS and Drones in the Middle Moche Valley: an Analysis of Huaca Menocucho (2017)
Huaca Menocucho is a prehistoric monumental center located in the middle Moche Valley on the northern coast of Peru. The site shows evidence of several construction and occupation phases of the Moche Valley cultural sequence (Prieto & Maquera, 2015). Huaca Menocucho and the surrounding area have faced looting and destruction from several sources. In July 2016, MOCHE, Inc. conducted a drone survey combined with a systematic surface artifact survey to record information about activities and...
GIS, Identity, and the Sacred Landscape (2017)
GIS techniques are no foreigner to Mesoamerican studies though the hybridization of digital analytics and human identity is incomplete. In recent years suites of technologies have allowed for better visualization of data within archaeological projects. Though computer programs and higher profile data-gathering techniques have become widely embraced by the archaeological community, research should be rooted in cultural proclivities as well. By recording the complex shifts in topography via remote...
A Glaring Absence: The Need for Native Philosophy in Ontological Archaeologies (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Ontological Turn has become thoroughly entrenched in archaeological research, providing both new avenues of topical research as well as strong influences over the discipline as a whole. It has provided a needed shift to thinking outside the traditional archaeological box, taking many steps in the right direction. Yet, in the majority of cases,...
Glenn A. Black and the Lessons of Big Site/Big Science Archaeology (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Sins of Our Ancestors (and of Ourselves): Confronting Archaeological Legacies" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Large-scale excavations in the first half of the 20th century, like those conducted by Glenn Black at Angel Mounds, were a means to deliver archaeology from its antiquarian roots to legitimate scientific practice. Though this transformation led to innovative methods, amassed collections of unprecedented size...
A Glimpse of the People of Altica: Osteological and Isotopic/Radiocarbon Analysis (2017)
Altica is the earliest-known settled village in the Teotihuacan Valley, and perhaps the only first-farming village site in the Basin of Mexico that has survived to modern times. Thus, it provides a rare glimpse into life during the Early-Middle Formative period. While only four burials comprising four individuals were recovered from pits dug into bedrock, each tells a unique story.Two individuals are older-aged females, the third, a middle-aged male, was accompanied by prestigious nonperishable...
Going Up, Coming Down: Ruins, Verticality, and Time in the Postclassic Mixteca (2023)
This is an abstract from the "The Vibrancy of Ruins: Ruination Studies in Ancient Mesoamerica" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. For peoples of the Postclassic Mixtec highlands, ruins of earlier civilizations were often found on mountaintops outside some of the most politically prominent communities in the region. These ruined hilltop sites came to be viewed as places of primordial origin and were sites of religious pilgrimage. In this paper, drawing...
Gold (Tumbaga) and Butterfly Symbolism (2017)
When metals were introduced in Mesoamerica ca. AD 850 they were used with both utilitarian and decorative purposes. Copper artifacts were turned into fishing hooks, tweezers, or axes. However, silver and gold were mostly used in jewelry production. Several deities were fashioned in gold as well as animals associated with gods. They included pendants, nose-rings, necklaces, etc. Warriors were also depicted as pendants, and there are examples in discs too. The context where the objects have been...
Good Medicine: Prescriptions for Indigenous Archaeological Practice (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Sins of Our Ancestors (and of Ourselves): Confronting Archaeological Legacies" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. While the history of North American archaeology points to a long engagement with tribal elders and scholars, these encounters largely consist of unequal, extractive relationships wherein indigenous collaborators and indigenous archaeologists have been treated more as objects of study and pity—what Bea Medicine...
“Grandmother of Light, Mistress of Shaping”: Midwife Deities in Highland Maya Ritual (2023)
This is an abstract from the "The Role of Women in Mesoamerican Ritual" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. According to the Popol Vuh, the first truly successful human beings were created from maize by the goddess Xmucane: “The yellow ears of maize and the white ears of maize were then ground fine with nine grindings by Xmucane. Food entered their flesh, along with water to give them strength. . . . The yellowness of humanity came to be when they were...
A Granite Tool Producing Community on the Western Periphery of Pacbitun, Belize (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Recent Advances in Ground Stone Studies in the Eastern Maya Lowlands" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Between 2012 and 2014, a small mound was excavated on the periphery of the Pacbitun site, a medium-sized ancient Maya center located in the Belize River Valley of west-central Belize. That mound revealed a record of the production of 4,000 granite mano and metates dating to the Late Classic period. Since those...
A Granular Analysis of Public Comments to Proposed NAGPRA Revisions (2024)
This is an abstract from the "In Search of Solutions: Exploring Pathways to Repatriation for NAGPRA Practitioners (Part IV): NAGPRA in Policy, Protocol, and Practice" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In response to stagnated repatriation efforts in the 32 years since the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA, 43 CFR 10) became law, a new proposed rule to revise implementation regulations was entered into the federal register...
A Greasy Mess: Reconsidering Prehistoric Bone Grease Extraction and its Implications for Site Interpretation (2018)
Ethnohistoric accounts and archaeological evidence show that North American Indigenous hunter gatherers utilized fats and oils rendered from smashing and boiling faunal bone for dietary and other uses. In the archaeological record, evidence of bone grease extraction is interpreted from fractured faunal remains recovered from midden deposits and thermal features. However, most archaeological studies of bone grease extraction tend to focus on subsistence to the exclusion of other uses. This...
The Great Maya Droughts in Cultural Context: Case Studies in Residence and Vulnerability (2014)
In The Great Maya Droughts in Cultural Context, contributors reject the popularized link between societal collapse and drought in Maya civilization, arguing that a series of periodic "collapses," including the infamous Terminal Classic collapse (AD 750), were caused not solely by climate change-related droughts but by a combination of other social, political, and environmental factors. New and senior scholars of archaeology and environmental science explore the timing and intensity of droughts...
The Greater Chiriquí Fringes: A Perspective from the Coiba National Park Islands on the Pacific Coast of Panama (2018)
The islands of the Coiba National Park (CNP) are located on the continental platform of Panama and the southeastern fringes of the Greater Chiriquí cultural region. During the period of the earliest human migrations to the isthmus (ca. 13,000 - 10,000 a.P.) these islands were connected to the mainland, although the current state of research cannot provide evidence of being inhabited earlier than ca. 1800 B.P. Multidisciplinary research aimed to study the long-term impacts of human on the insular...
Greater Nicoya Metates and the Art Market: A Case Study (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A distinctive tradition of intricately sculpted metates—commonly known as grinding stones—flourished along the Pacific coast of Nicaragua and Costa Rica circa 300-900 CE. The Greater Nicoya burials that contain carved metates often include grave goods made of precious materials such as jade and gold. As a result, these sites have been subject to looting since...
The Growth Trajectories of Mesoamerican Cities (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The growth trajectory of a city through time is responsive to both internal and external forces. The shapes of such trajectories provide information about a variety of social, political, and economic processes that operated in the past. We present and analyze data from both well-excavated cities and regional settlement surveys in Mesoamerica. The patterns we...
Guide to the Identification of Certain American Indian Projectile Points (1958)
This guide to the identification of certain American Indian projectile points is designed to acquaint the reader with a series of projectile point types that have been identified and named by archaeologists. As a guide it is far from complete, and there are many additional types of projectile points that are not included; also, there are a number of distinctive forms which have not been typed. There are somewhere between 150 and 200 projectile point types that have been named in the United...
Guide To the Identification of Certain American Indian Projectile Points (1968)
Special Bulletin No. 3 is a continuation of the Guide to the Identification of Certain American Indian Projectile Points, published by the Oklahoma Anthropological Society in December 1958, and October 1960. Information and pen drawings are presented for 50 projectile point types that have been recognized in the United States and Canada. There are 150 point types included in the three Special Bulletins; still, not all are included that have been recognized or identified throughout the...
Guidelines for Creating a Typology for Mass-Produced Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Burial Container Hardware (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The analysis and historical study of burial container hardware and other mortuary artifacts is crucial in establishing a useful discourse between the multiple lines of evidence recorded and recovered in historical cemetery investigations. Exact identification of types and styles of burial container hardware is vital in defining the chronology of burial,...
Génesis del Museo Yucateco durante el Segundo Imperio (1863-1867) (2017)
El presbítero Crescencio Carrillo y Ancona fue un destacado intelectual yucateco y precursor del estudio científico de la arqueología maya, que culminó sus esfuerzos con la inauguración del Museo Yucateco en 1871 en base a sus propias colecciones. El análisis de diversos documentos de archivo ha hecho posible conocer los antecedentes de tal institución durante el Segundo Imperio mexicano. El emperador Maximiliano mostró un notable interés por la historia y las culturas indígenas, al igual que la...