Republic of Costa Rica (Country) (Geographic Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stacy Drake. Marla MacKinnon. America Guerra.

In 2016, The Field Museum was awarded a National Leadership Grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS). The overall mission of this project is to "research, explore, develop, and implement thoughtful, practical, and forward-thinking practices for the ethical care of human remains." The project is working to bring together stakeholders from collections-holding institutions, scientific research institutions, and Native American and First Nations communities to move beyond...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Taylor Bowden. Todd Ahlman. Ashley McKeown. Nicholas Herrmann.

This is an abstract from the "NSF REU Site: Exploring Globalization through Archaeology 2019–2020 Session, St. Eustatius, Dutch Caribbean" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Multiple isotope analyses of skeletal tissues are a useful tool for exploring lifeways of past populations. Isotopic analysis of Caribbean populations is still in its infancy, making the technique a useful tool for learning about these populations. St. Eustatius is a small island...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Haden Kingrey. Matthew Napolitano. Geoffrey Clark. Scott Fitzpatrick.

The oldest identified sites on Yap are identified by presence calcareous sand tempered (CST) pottery from deeply stratified deposits. With few exceptions, CST pottery, made from locally produced clay, has been recovered from Rungluw and Pemrang, two sites in southern Yap, western Micronesia (northwest tropical Pacific). Although poor preservation conditions and small sample sizes make it difficult to reconstruct vessel size, detailed analysis of sherds demonstrates at least two sub-types. Recent...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Frederick Lange.

To paraphrase the symposium organizers, for decades changes in the pre-Columbian material culture of Central America were attributed to either migration or conquest. When I began archaeological research in Costa Rica in 1969 the endless debate was about Mesoamerican influence. Technological and iconographic linkages were frequently cited, but rarely were the mechanisms of the proposed linkages adequately defined or demonstrated archaeologically. In 2008, perhaps unduly influenced by having moved...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Loren Davis. Masami Izuho. Alexander Nyers. Fumie Iizuka. David Madsen.

This is an abstract from the "The Global “Impact” of Projectile Technologies: Updating Methods and Regional Overviews of the Invention and Transmission of the Spear-Thrower and the Bow and Arrow" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. While paleogenetic studies indicate that the majority of the genomic heredity of indigenous peoples of the Americas can be traced to late Pleistocene human populations in far eastern Asia, we do not yet understand whether a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Eric Proebsting.

This is an abstract from the "Advancing Public Perceptions of Sustainability through Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Over the past thirty years, landscape archaeology has been used to study Thomas Jefferson’s retreat home and plantation located in Bedford County, Virginia. A goal of this work has been to cultivate a deeper understanding of the individuals who lived and labored on Poplar Forest plantation as well as how their households...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Abby Baka. K. Blake Vernon. Madeline Mackie. Jerry Spangler. Alexandra Greenwald.

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. The Pleistocene-Holocene transition (PHT) archaeological record on the Colorado Plateau is notably sparse, especially when compared to the surrounding Great Basin, Rocky Mountain, and Plains regions. Whether this dearth is due to low human populations in the region during the PHT, or due to insufficient fieldwork...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Aspen Kemmerlin.

This is an abstract from the "Pedagogy in the Undergraduate Archaeology Classroom" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent trends in archaeological pedagogy include the adoption of active learning models as well as courses that incorporate community and public archaeology frameworks. These shifts have primarily been centered on archaeological field schools and on-campus excavations. In contrast, despite the growing concern over legacy and orphaned...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Yajaira Núñez-Cortés. Francisco Corrales-Ulloa.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Central Pacific region is one of the least explored areas of Costa Rican archaeology. Recent research conducted at Lomas Entierros and Sardinal sites allow us to contribute to the understanding of the history of occupation in the area, but also to consider the emergence, occupation and abandonment of prominent political centers inhabited during AD...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Matthew Abtosway.

The Central American elaborate metate is a perplexing group of ground stone artifacts. Their function continues to be the subject of debate, with interpretations ranging from hallucinogenic and food preparation to ritual seating. It is difficult to deny, however, the substantial labor investment represented and likely symbolic significance. X-Ray fluorescence spectroscopy has proven an invaluable tool in the non-destructive geochemical sourcing of archaeological obsidian, providing insights into...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stacy Drake.

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. Studies of ancient Maya mortuary patterns have asserted that Maya burials do not adhere to a singular mortuary pattern (Ashmore and Geller 2005, Fitzsimmons 2009, Geller 2004, Ruz Lhuillier 1965, Welsh 1988). However, many of these same studies also suggest that a review of data specific to certain contexts (inter-site, time period,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kim Ruf.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Using Costa Rican precolumbian jade, jadeite, and greenstone artifacts from the collections of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnography, this study aims to amplify and widen the range of research carried out on the Isthmo-Colombian Area. It particularly seeks to examine and discuss the role of those objects as indicators of rank and prestige as...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Myrtle Shock. Laura Furquim. Jennifer Watling. Eduardo Neves.

In the Brazilian Amazon, mid-Holocene maize (Zea mays) grains have been found in archaeological deposits of the Monte Castelo shell mound. The morphological differences are pronounced between these and grains from both modern maize races of the Amazon and those found beginning around 1,500 years ago at other sites in the region. Our research explores the history, from 3900 BP, and use of this extinct maize. The presence of cultivars rich in carbohydrates in the Amazon has traditionally been...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Camila Alday.

This is an abstract from the "Textile Tools and Technologies as Evidence for the Fiber Arts in Precolumbian Societies" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This research aims to study the earliest fabric artifacts made by marine hunter-gatherers who inhabited the Peru-Chile desert coast. Thanks to the aridity of this area, I use a remarkable amount of well-preserved plant-fiber materials, most belonging to the world’s oldest Chinchorro mummies buried...

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 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 Natasha Fernandez-Preston.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The purpose of this research is to trace food practices in the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico for the last century (1919-2018) and relate them to the processes of colonial racial capitalism. Since the mid-twentieth century, Puerto Rico went from being a mostly agricultural archipelago to an archipelago where there is barely any agriculture and that imports...

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 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 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...