Republic of Guatemala (Country) (Geographic Keyword)
1,426-1,450 (2,898 Records)
This paper will offer preliminary results of fish otolith thin-section growth ring analysis from the Postclassic archaeological site of Mayapan, Yucatan, Mexico. This study offers the first use of otoliths for investigating seasonality of the fish trade in the Yucatan, utilizing perhaps the largest collection of otoliths from an inland site in the Maya world. Data on seasonality, age, and size of several fish species are presented, and discussed in the context of trade ethnohistory, ecology,...
Investigating the Emergence of Ute Culture on the Uncompahgre Plateau, Colorado (2018)
The Numic Expansion (A.D. 900 to 1300) and other explanatory models that have been used to explain the distribution of Numic speakers across the American West often fall short of providing specific methods for identifying peoples, such as Ute, in the archaeological record. This paper expands on previous investigations of this Numic Expansion narrative through the detailed reanalysis of lithics from two excavated sites: Christmas Rockshelter (5DT2) and Shavano Spring (5MN40). I compare lithic...
Investigating the Maya Polity at Lower Barton Creek, Cayo, Belize (2017)
Over fifty years of settlement research in the Belize River Valley has made the region one of the most intensively investigated areas of the Maya Lowlands. Recent LiDAR research by the Belize Valley Archaeological Reconnaissance Project identified the previously unknown center of Lower Barton Creek in the southern extent of the Belize Valley, filling in a major gap in our understanding of settlement histories. In this paper, we present the results of settlement survey based on spatial analysis...
Investigating the Population History of Western North America: Implications for the Peopling of the New World (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Western North America has emerged as a key region of focus in studies addressing the migration routes and demographic processes involved in the peopling of the Americas. Archaeological investigations in this region have resulted in the discovery of several of the earliest human skeletons and archaeological sites on the North American continent. Given that this...
Investigating the Presence of Neighborhoods in Classic Maya Dispersed Settlement Patterns (2017)
Classic Maya settlement patterns can be characterized as dispersed or ‘low density’. Yet among the dispersed house groups scattered across the landscape, patterns of residential clustering can often be discerned. These settlement clusters likely resulted from an array of different forms of interaction which collectively acted as centripetal forces bringing people together. For this reason, Maya residential clusters probably represent extended corporate groups or neighborhoods. Unlike their...
Investigations at San Andres Semetabaj and the Problematics of Middle to Late PreClassic Highland Archaeology (2017)
The site of San Andres Semetabaj, Guatemala, located on the northern edge of Lake Atitlan, is central, geographically and chronologically, to major theoretical and culture-historical controversies and problems of PreClassic highland archaeology. The size, nature, and importance of the site have been underestimated, in part due to limited available information based only on smaller preliminary seasons and a looted tomb and also due to the assumption by many that the very large structures there...
Investigations of a Preclassic E Group at Las Ruinas de Arenal, Belize (2021)
This is an abstract from the "The Preclassic Landscape in the Mopan Valley, Belize" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Mopan Valley Preclassic Project began a multiyear project at Las Ruinas de Arenal as part of a larger regional study of the Preclassic social and political landscape in the upper Belize River valley. New excavations of the site’s E Group complex and associated ball court have shed light on Preclassic ritual behavior at the site....
Investigations of Peri-Urban Settlement and Domestic Reservoirs: Research from Yaxnohcah, Campeche, Mexico (2017)
Peri-urban zones of settlement are unique localities among the urban-rural continuum that form due to dispersed urban growth, creating hybrid landscapes of fragmented urban and rural characteristics. Within these zones, domestic-scale reservoirs that the ancient Maya modified and maintained to manage their seasonally-scarce water resources are an important component. This study focuses on processes of multiple nuclei urban development and associated peri-urban formation at the site of Yaxnohcah...
Invisible Women in a World of Men: The Textile Trade in the North Atlantic, AD 1000–1600 (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Social Archaeology in the North and North Atlantic (SANNA 3.0): Investigating the Social Lives of Northern Things" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Waterlogged or deeply buried deposits from medieval harbors in certain northern European towns have produced large and well-preserved textile assemblages that contain a surprising number of non-indigenous textiles. Some of these appear to have originated in the North...
Involve Me and I Learn: Archaeology, Experiential Education, and Collaborative Research with SUU Undergrads (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. By partnering with federal land agencies, local landowners and developers, regional non-profit organizations, state museums, and county libraries, Southern Utah University (SUU) archaeology students gain access to valuable experiential learning opportunities, build their professional resumes, practice service learning, and help educate the public about the...
"Irishness" and Tea Consumption: The Materiality of Ethnicity (2018)
Excavations at the McHugh Site (47WP294), a mid-to-late Nineteenth Century homestead in Wisconsin, resulted in the recovery of a large material culture assemblage. Historical documents reveal the site’s occupants to have been pre-famine Irish emigrants who settled in Ohio before moving to Wisconsin in 1850. However, analyses of the material culture have thus far failed to uncover evidence of an Irish identity distinct from an American identity. This paper presents results of an analysis of the...
Iron Production at Marginal Settlements in Northern Iceland (2018)
The environment of Iceland was rapidly and severely affected by the Norse Settlement, in particular by deforestation. In Iceland’s changing environment the production of iron, an essential material, became limited not by access to iron ore but by availability of wood to make charcoal fuel. The large-scale production of iron may be one of the primary processes that led to deforestation in Iceland due to the large need for charcoal. Investigations at Stekkjarborg on the farm of Keldudalur in...
Irreducible Reducción: Archaeological Microhistory at Mawchu Llacta, a Planned Colonial Town in Highland Peru (2017)
The Reducción General de Indios (General Resettlement of Indians) in the Viceroyalty of Peru brought about one of the largest mass resettlement programs ever enacted by a colonial power, forcibly displacing some 1.5 million native Andeans to compact towns (reducciones) built around plazas and churches. As a colonial utopic project, the Reducción was to remake the Andean world in the ideal self-image of Spanish civic and religious community. As materialized manifestations in the Andean...
Is It All Just Faïence and Honey-Colored Gun Flints? Examining the Material Record of Eighteenth-Century French Culture in Multiregional Perspective (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Recent Colonial Archaeological Research in the American Midcontinent" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. By the first quarter of the eighteenth century, the “blue crescent” of French land claims and settlement had spread across North America from the Acadian coast to southern Louisiana. While French colonial settlements existed contemporaneously throughout the middle of the continent, historians and archaeologists have...
Is that Roo on the Barbeque? Using Use-Wear, Residue Analysis and Biochemical Staining to identify varied subsistence practices in Aboriginal archaeological sites in Australia. (2017)
Environmental factors associated with open context sites are frequently considered to negatively impact on the survival of archaeological residues on lithic artefacts. This report challenges these views and documents how the simple combination of three lines of evidence enabled the identification and characterisation of significant and varied subsistence practises from two sites on opposite sides of Australia. The identification of use-related residues was facilitated by using a specifically...
Is This Democracy? Consensus Decision-Making and Collective Self-Governance in Mesoamerica (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Misinformation and Misrepresentation Part 1: Reconsidering “Human Sacrifice,” Religion, Slavery, Modernity, and Other European-Derived Concepts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The term “democracy,” with its roots in the Greek word demokratia, originally referred to the capacity of “the people” to make collective decisions regarding wider society and to effect change in the public sphere. As republicanism emerged in...
Islands of Ideology: Exploring Group Formation in Hawaiʻi and Sāmoa (2024)
This is an abstract from the "States, Confederacies, and Nations: Reenvisioning Early Large-Scale Collectives." session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Social consent was essential to promote cooperation and group identity. Because of disciplinary attention to top-down processes of power accumulation and political classification, how social notions of social consent in middle-range societies were modified and diversified is poorly understood. The societies...
Isotopes of Coastal Ecuador (2017)
A preliminary report is presented on research into the diet, health, and mobility patterns for prehistoric coastal Ecuador, based on an analysis of both modern data and archaeological data from Site 035 Salango. An assessment of dietary habits provides insight into a broad range of societal developments, such as the implementation and timing of maize agriculture. Additional insights are provided by an osteological evaluation of human remains, with a particular focus on evidence of pathologies...
An Isotopic Evaluation of the Classic Andean Mobility Models in Northern Chile during the Late Intermediate Period (AD 900-1450) (2017)
Research on the Late Intermediate Period (AD 900-1450) in northern Chile has been strongly influenced by two mobility models: John Murra’s classic vertical archipelago model and the more recent gyratory mobility model. The use and application of these two models, however, is problematic since there is insufficient supporting archaeological evidence. The use of stable isotope analysis allows a direct approach for studying diet and mobility patterns, in contrast to material culture. The aim of...
Isotopic Perspectives on Animal Husbandry Practices (2017)
This paper presents carbon and nitrogen isotope data from camelid (llama and alpaca) bone, hair, and wool textiles from sites throughout the north coast of Peru spanning the Early Intermediate Period through the Late Intermediate Period (200 BC – AD 1476). Through these case studies this paper explores how stable isotope data can be interpreted using various statistical methods to infer a deeper understanding of human-animal interactions in the past than would be possible using only traditional...
It Brings Me No Joy to Tell You All This, but We Actually Found Gold Once: A Discussion of Visitor Engagement Using Historical and Archaeological Interpretation in Alaska Public Lands (2021)
This is an abstract from the ""Is There Gold in that Field?" CRM and Public Outreach on the Front Lines" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. While they usually do not work in the capacity of Public Information Officers or interpretive staff, cultural resource managers and archaeological technicians are often the ones who are literally "fielding" questions from the public. These questions invariably deal with what "grand discoveries" we have made with...
It Was Not Always the Frontier: Multicultural Interaction between Isthmo-Colombian and Mesoamerican Peoples in Central Costa Rica (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Postclassic Mesoamerica: The View from the Southern Frontier" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Evidence for interregional exchange between Central Costa Rica and Greater Nicoya dates back to AD 300, and lasted until the arrival of Europeans in the sixteenth century. Previous scholarship postulates that these regions were located in a changing boundary between Mesoamerican and Isthmo-Colombian peoples. While this may be...
It's Complicated: Making Sense of Material Monoculture in Multicultural Societies (2018)
Ethnohistoric and colonial documents typically focus on detailing a socioeconomic and political landscape dominated by Chorotega and Nicarao groups for contact-period Pacific Nicaragua. Yet these texts simultaneously indicate that other groups living in isolated communities or urban barrios were also commonplace and included Maribios, Mazatec, Chondal, Matagalpans, Sumo-Ulwa, and possibly Lenca and/or Maya-speaking peoples, among others. As archaeologists, we are aware—many of us dutifully...
It’s all a bit retro: Investigating early phase rock art on the Dampier Archipelago, Northwest Australia. (2017)
Murujuga, located off the northwest coast of Australia, possesses one of the largest and most vibrant open air rock art galleries on the planet. On Murujuga, low erosion rates, durable geology, and growing evidence from the wider region has allowed for archaeological contextualization of rock art into deep time; giving researchers the opportunity to investigate both the changing social dynamics of groups and the stimuli for this change over thousands of years. The main objective of this paper is...
It’s Complicated: Additional Insight into the Source(s) for Poverty Point Copper (2024)
This is an abstract from the "*SE Not Your Father’s Poverty Point: Rewriting Old Narratives through New Research" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. As the largest and most complex archaic period earthwork site in Eastern North America, and the center of an extensive exchange network covering a wide region of eastern and central North America, Poverty Point has been the subject of considerable research efforts. Among this body of research, Hill and...