Republic of Guatemala (Country) (Geographic Keyword)
651-675 (2,898 Records)
This paper will discuss the various activities that took place on the exterior stone patio floor of the M6-12 domestic structure at Cancuen, Guatemala, and compare it to previously published findings of the M10-4 and M10-7 structures. These structures typically have a low investment in construction and appear to be non-elite in status, characterized by earthen mounds surrounded by limestone flagstone floors and perishable superstructures. These surfaces often appear to be communal activity areas...
Complementary Economic Specialization in an Emerging Decentralized Exchange System: A Case from the Late Classic Naco Valley, Honduras (2018)
This paper describes the reuse of a small structure at Late Classic (CE 600-900) Site 426 in the Naco Valley, northwest Honduras. The structure shows evidence of being converted from residential use to firing ceramic vessels. The current interpretation of the structure’s reuse is that it emerged as a center of ceramic manufacture as power waned at La Sierra, the valley’s previous political capital. In this context, Site 426’s residents, along with their immediate neighbors, sought some...
The Complex Community of Cerén, El Salvador: a Classic Maya Example of Heterogeneity (2018)
The Loma Caldera eruption of c. AD 660 dramatically buried a sophisticated community built by craftspeople, architects, religious specialists, political leaders, and agriculturalists. As people fled for their lives, they left behind belongings and buildings. Results from decades of archaeological research at Cerén, El Salvador and in the surrounding Zapotitán Valley challenges an ethnocentric, over-simplified reconstruction of ancient socio-political organization. Cerén was not in the middle of...
Complexity during the Aguas Buenas Period of Greater Chiriquí: Initial Comparisons between El Cholo, Cantarero, and Pejeperro Sites, Southern Costa Rica (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. The development of precontact social hierarchy in southern Central America is a subject open to debate. For the Aguas Buenas period (300 BC–AD 800) of the Greater Chiriquí archaeological region, new data at the regional level (Costa Rica, Panama) indicate the appearance of centers with architectural complexity after AD 400. This...
The Complexity of Trash: Reframing Construction Fill (2017)
Mesoamerican archaeologists have traditionally, although not exclusively, viewed artifacts found in the context of construction fill as trash and devoid of primary contextual information, a view that has limited the questions that archaeologists are able to ask of these materials. This paper posits an alternative interpretation to the meaning of material culture used in construction fill, utilizing evidence from Formative period construction fill found at the site of Cahal Pech, Cayo, Belize....
Compositional and Technological Analysis of Panamanian Colonial Utilitarian Wares (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In Panama, as in other regions of the Caribbean and Latin America, several archaeologists have reported the presence of colonial utilitarian wares, also known as Colono-Indian ware, creole ware, and coarse hand-made earthenware. Previous research on this ware focuses on refining the typologies and identifying traits that could be related to African, Spanish,...
Conceptual and Technical Connectivity in Indigenous South American Rock Art Traditions (2017)
Archaeologists have long sought to explain the distribution of rock art traditions across Amazonia and circum-Amazonia with reference to stylistic variability in the iconography, often as a proxy for exploring shared concepts of symbolic representation, mediated through local cultural norms. Where it has been possible, cross-referencing this kind of data with the ethnographic and archaeological records has engendered valuable new interpretations of indigenous symbolic repertoires in a variety of...
Conceptualizing Consent: The Influence of Legal Language on Postmortem Agency (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Across institutions nationally, willed-body (or cadaver donation) programs use language that, although often vague, typically provides some level of detail regarding what exactly donors are consenting to. This poster assesses use and recovery of the collected body in anthropological contexts, framed using the language of modern body donation. In reviewing...
Confronting Conflict in the Tequila Region: Spatial Configurations in a Bellicose Landscape (2017)
During the Late Postclassic, the Tequila region was home to multiple small, ethnically, and linguistically diverse polities, which both competed and cooperated with one another. This period was highly conflictive due to attempts by the Tarascan Empire to push its way into the valleys, wreaking havoc in several towns along the way. To the north, bellicose, nomadic groups were also a threat to Tequila’s population. Therefore, we hypothesize that Late Postclassic settlement patterns reflect this...
Connecting archaeology and ecology in northwest Belize (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Ancient Maya Landscapes in Northwestern Belize, Part I" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Some archaeologists believe that a key to the success of ancient Maya civilization was sophisticated tailoring of agriculture and forestry to varied environments. Some archaeologists and ecologists also think that ancient forestry is reflected in the tree species composition of modern forests. Based on studies in northwest Belize we...
Connectivity beyond the floodplains: the case of the upper Tapajós (2017)
The first millennium AD saw an increase in population density throughout much of Amazonia; this is testified by an increase in the number and size of coeval archaeological sites, many of which include anthropogenic dark earths, widely considered as proxies for intensive and continuous human habitation and alteration of the environment. The Terra Preta do Mangabal and Sawre Muybu sites were village settlements occupied from c.700AD and c.900AD respectively, located along the rapids of the upper...
Conquest as Revival in the Sixteenth-century Maya Highlands: Excavations at Chiantla Viejo, Guatemala (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Art, Archaeology, and Science: Investigations in the Guatemala Highlands" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeological investigations at Chiantla Viejo, in the western Guatemalan highlands, focused on studying how public ritual in spaces for communal gatherings mediated changes and continuities in small Maya communiies during the Spanish conquest. Excavations revealed a short occupation at Chiantla Viejo at the...
CONQUILIOLOGÍA EN ARQUEOLOGÍA, O "CÓMO TRABAJAR MATERIALES ARQUEOLÓGICOS DE CONCHA SIN MORIR EN EL INTENTO" (2017)
En el interés de los estudios interdisciplinarios cada una de las partes aporta un conocimiento especializado, lo que tiene como finalidad generar aportes más sólidos en los campos que intervienen. En el caso de la arqueología, el análisis de materiales de concha implica el concurso de especialistas bien entrenados, pues no es lo mismo el estudio de moluscos actuales que el de tiempos pretéritos. Ello obliga a partir de los conocimientos más actualizados tanto en el ámbito de la arqueología como...
Conquista y artefactos arqueológicos: Una lectura desde el Derecho Indiano (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Archaeology and Material Culture of the Spanish Invasion of Mesoamerica and Forging of New Spain" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. El periodo que corresponde a la conquista, establecimiento e imposición del orden español en México, de 1519 a 1821, se caracterizó por la colisión cultural entre poblaciones nativas y colonizadores europeos. En ese contexto, este trabajo analiza a los artefactos de manufactura...
The Consequences of State Collapse: Evidence from the San Lucas Neighborhood during the Terminal Classic (2017)
Understanding the growth and dissolution of state entities has long been a topic of anthropological inquiry. More recently, archaeologists are promulgating dynamic and careful conceptions of how leaders acquire power, and whether and why surrounding residents may support them. By turning our attention to the political economic relationship between Maya rulers and the local population, we can identify successful and failed attempts to maintain states. In this paper, I combine political...
Conservación de la arquitectura en tierra y pinturas murales de Pañamarca (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Paisajes Arqueológicos de Pañamarca: Findings from the 2018–2023 Field Seasons" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. La Conservación de la arquitectura en tierra y pinturas murales del proyecto "Paisajes Arqueológicos de Pañamarca" en las temporadas 2022 y 2023, se desarrollaron en paralelo a los trabajos de excavación, teniendo en consideración la vulnerabilidad estructural así como la fragilidad de los murales pictóricos,...
Conservación de la pintura mural de una tumba Zapoteca de la Sierra Norte de Oaxaca (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Checking the Pulse: Current Research in Oaxaca Part I" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Enclavado en la entrada de la región de la Sierra de Juárez, Oaxaca, San Pedro Nexicho es una comunidad zapoteca asentada sobre los vestigios arqueológicos de un sitio que data de la época Clásica y Posclásica, en cuya época más tardía constituyó el Señorío de Ixtepeji. A partir del año 2015 la fundación Alfredo Harp Helú se interesó...
Conservation of sawfish rostra in the Great Temple of Tenochtitlan (2017)
Throughout the explorations of the Templo Mayor Project, numerous offerings have been surveyed, most of them standing out for the large number of animal remains recovered including a great deal of sawfish, characterized by an anterior long and flat snout that has teeth on both sides. Their skeleton and snouts are chemically composed by hydroxyapatite and collagen in different crystalline arrangements. This causes the stabilization and conservation processes to be a challenge for the...
Considerations for Your Stewardship Journey: The Indigenous Collections Care Guide as a Resource (2024)
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. Museums and academic institutions are beginning to reexamine their collections stewardship and daily practice by inviting Indigenous voices and perspectives into the conversation. This is becoming particularly relevant with the proposed addition of duty of care to the NAGPRA regulations....
Considerations of Depositional Context for the Commingled, Fragmentary Skeletal Assemblage from the Cave Environment at Cueva de Sangre, Guatemala (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Multidisciplinary Approaches to the Subterranean" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Commingled, fragmentary assemblages of skeletal remains present many complications for analysis; however, there is still much information to be gleaned from the study of them. An example of this is the skeletal assemblage from Cueva de Sangre in Guatemala, an extensive, 3.5km long cave system; its use has been ceramically dated from the...
Considering the Role of Mammoth and Other Megafauna in Food Systems across North America (2024)
This is an abstract from the "American Foragers: Human-Environmental Interactions across the Continents" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeologists agree that proboscideans and other megafauna played a role in lifeways of the first Americans. From eastern Beringia to central America, the evidence is unequivocal: humans hunted mammoths. But what role did these animals play in the food systems of the first Americans? New research at several...
Constructing Rural Complexity: Intra-household Relations of Community and Inequality at Chunhuayum, Yucatán, Mexico. (2017)
The concept of rural complexity acknowledges that social, political, and economic complexity is not limited to large urban centers (Iannone and Connell 2003; Schwartz and Falconer 1994). Like urbanites, hinterland residents are involved in diverse and shifting interactions through which they form, maintain, and reinvent relations of commonality and social differentiation. Chunhuayum, a small settlement located in the Northern Lowlands and occupied from the Late Preclassic through the Late...
Constructing Social Memory: Inca Politics and Sacred Landscape in the Lurin Valley (2017)
We will discuss the characteristics and scope of Inca politics in the Lurin Valley by focusing on the results of excavations carried out by Makowski (2016) in Pachacamac with its famous Imperial Inca temple and oracle, as well as in the administrative center Pueblo Viejo – Pucara. The comparison of landscape transformed by Imperial infrastructure between the Highlands of Cuzco (Christie 2016) and the lower Lurin Valley allows to reconstruct the mechanisms through which social memory was...
Constructing the Social Fabric of a Community: Household Service Relationships to the Ceren Village (2018)
Volcanic preservation allows for detailed reconstructions of a variety of social relationships and material boundaries at Ceren. Service relationships are inferred from proximity of households associated with special-function structures, such as the religious complex, the sauna and the community governance center. These data show a social function of providing service relationships from each household to the community. Socioeconomic functions are also evident in the form of other...
The construction of archaeological practice: Sex/gender and sexuality on the fringe (2017)
Archaeologists have incorporated sex/gender and sexuality research in projects for decades, yet such foci have failed to become widespread as they are largely considered a specialty or niche topic. This paper first looks at why the topics in question have remained on the fringe of archaeological research. The subsequent discussion analyzes ways in which contemporary practices can counteract deeply embedded ideas about the archaeology of sex/ gender and sexuality, making this approach to the...