Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela (Country) (Geographic Keyword)
1,101-1,125 (1,154 Records)
Several scholars have explored the role of the empirical sciences in colonial contexts; far from a neutral study of the world, they were actively making and remaking material, social, and geographic boundaries. Cartography was part of these boundary-making practices, as the varying positions and views of actors engaging with the world are dissolved into the singular, authoritative view offered by the map. Studying a cholera epidemic that moved through the Caribbean in the 1850s, I consider how...
A View from the Hinterlands: Early Colonial Objects in Mortuary Contexts in Northern Highland Ecuador (2017)
In this paper I re-visit a particularly interesting find made in the Pimampiro District of northern highland Ecuador a number of years ago. It consisted of a traditional shaft tomb burial that contained an unusual assemblage of items, which included seemingly obvious Late Period Caranqui and Panzaleo wares together with a set of four Nueva Cadiz beads. How and why did these precious European objects penetrate this seemingly remote region at such an early date to be inserted into such a basic...
A View from the Past: A Reanalysis of Archaeological Collections from the Sama Valley and its Implications for Current Models and Chronologies of the Southern Andean Valleys (2017)
Although limited in area compared to the neighboring Moquegua, Caplina, and Azapa valleys, the Sama valley (Departamento Tacna, Peru) with its the warm temperature, perennial water sources and arable flood plain creates hospitable conditions for highlanders who settled the valley as early as Late Horizon period. In his 1567 visita, Garci Diez de San Miguel notes the presence of a Luqapa colony and an Inca Tambo at the site of Sama Grande near the modern town of Sama-Inclan. In addition, survey...
Virtual Anthropology in Fieldwork, Conservation, and Education in Mexico: Lessons Learned, Challenges, and Future Perspectives (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Archaeological Futures through a Virtual Past" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The development of novel digital technologies has consistently expanded the capacities to explore and approach existing anthropological and archaeological research questions. Virtual Anthropology stands as a relatively new interdisciplinary approach that further expands our resolution to study ancient and recent human remains, cultural...
Visualizing the Origins of Monumentality: The Case of Tiwanaku, Bolivia (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Ancient Mesoamerican and Andean Cities: Old Debates, New Perspectives" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeologists examining early urban formations in the Andean Lake Titicaca basin have recently framed them as early “proto-urban” centers. In this paper, we reflect on our current understanding of the region’s proto-urbanism by deploying visualization methodologies to synthesize the evidence for Late Formative...
Visually Linking the Ritual and the Quotidian at Tiwanaku, AD 500-1100 (2017)
In this paper, I examine ceramic vessels, primarily serving wares, from the site of Tiwanaku, the preeminent city in the Central Andes between AD 500 and 1100, in order to examine the political effects of visual media in the ancient Andes. The paper’s empirical focal point is a comparison of ceramics recovered from the monumental core and from a residential sector at Tiwanaku. My analysis is based on both attribute and iconographic data I collected during fieldwork that sought to examine the...
Waffen der SüdseeVölker (1965)
This resource is a citation record only, the Center for Digital Antiquity does not have a copy of this document. The information in this record has been migrated into tDAR from the EXARC Bibliography, originally compiled by Roeland Paardekooper, and updated. Most of these records consist of a document citation and other metadata but do not have the documents themselves uploaded. If you have a digital copy of the document and would like to have it curated in tDAR, please contact us using the...
A Wake of Change: Investigating Biocultural Interaction During the Early Colonial Period in the Central Andes, Peru (2017)
Burial practice in the Central Andes was transmitted continuously from the Middle Horizon (AD 700-AD 1000) onward, if not earlier in some areas, reflecting an agreed-upon understanding of Andean social identity throughout time. However, when the Spanish colonized the Andes, they drastically altered this continuity, forcing indigenous populations to bury their dead under the Church in idealized Catholic tradition. This sudden change in burial practice ruptured Andean identity as indigenous...
Warfare and the Origins of Social Complexity in Southern Central America (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Warfare and the Origins of Political Control " session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Southern Central America is rich in examples of early complex societies, and yet, the timing and mechanism for the emergence of social complexity and differentiation are still not well understood. Recent works are moving archaeologists in the region to question, on the one hand, the definition of social complexity itself, and on the other...
Wari-Style Khipus from El Castillo de Huarmey (2017)
Archaeological evidence suggests that khipus—devices made of wrapped and knotted cords—were used by people living in the Wari Empire at least as early as Middle Horizon 1B. These Wari-style khipus, like their later, more famous, Inka descendants, likely carried and conveyed information using color and knots. Wari khipus differ from Inka khipus, however, in many respects including their use of colorful wrapping to make bands and patterns to convey information. Wari-style khipus survive in far...
Water, mines and wak’a at Belen valley in the highlands of Arica: the Inca making of a central place within the Andean transect of Arica and Parinacota (18°S) (2017)
Located on the edge of the Atacama Desert at the foot of the Carangas Altiplano, the Belén Valley witnessed substantial construction of imperial infrastructures during the late pre-Hispanic period. The Inca occupation was mainly related to agriculture, metallurgy and a sanctuary. The Belén Valley contains, in fact, the most important water resources in the upper basin of Azapa, copper and tin mines and an important mountain summit, which formed both economic and symbolic resources of special...
Waterscapes Domestication: Ponds, Fish Weirs, and Evidence of Managed Aquatic Environments in Amazonia (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Animal management and domestication have been widely studied in relation to terrestrial mammals; however, there are still debates over what “domestication” means for aquatic animals. Across the Amazon, in recent years, a great number of archaeological structures such as fish weirs, canals, ponds, and turtle and fish corrals have been documented, dating...
We Carry It Within Us: Shared Colonial History and Control of Caribbean Cultural Heritage Collections (2024)
This is an abstract from the "At the Frontier of Big Climate, Disaster Capitalism, and Endangered Cultural Heritage in Barbuda, Lesser Antilles" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. To quote James Baldwin, “History, as nearly no one seems to know, is not merely something to be read. And it does not refer merely, or even principally, to the past. On the contrary, the great force of history comes from the fact that we carry it within us, are unconsciously...
Wearing Culture: Dress and Regalia in Early Mesoamerica and Central America (2014)
Wearing Culture connects scholars of divergent geographical areas and academic fields-from archaeologists and anthropologists to art historians-to show the significance of articles of regalia and of dressing and ornamenting people and objects among the Formative period cultures of ancient Mesoamerica and Central America. Documenting the elaborate practices of costume, adornment, and body modification in Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, Oaxaca, the Soconusco region of southern...
Weaving the Cosmic House: Chibchan Myth and Nicaraguan Spindle Whorls (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Cordage, Yarn, and Associated Paraphernalia" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In Bribri myth, the Creator God Sibó commanded Sál, the head of the spider clan, to weave cane and thatch to cover the cosmic house, which was built to encapsulate the world order. The house was supported by a central pole with eight surrounding posts representing each of the major clans. In 20+ years of archaeological research in Pacific...
Were Hutia Domesticated in the Caribbean? (2017)
The Caribbean islands had limited endemic terrestrial fauna and they lacked any of the New World domesticated animals until fairly late in prehistory. Given the depauperate terrestrial fauna of these islands the early Native American inhabitants relied on marine resources and endemic rodents for a significant proportion of the animals in their diet. It has been argued that rodents from the family Capromyidae, various species of hutia, were managed and perhaps domesticated in the Caribbean. In...
Were the Lucayans a Creole Society? (2018)
"Were the Lucayans a creole society?" Can creolization be inferred from Lucayan material culture during the Early and Late Lucayan Periods? Through the examination of ceramics and other remains, such as duhos and shell and stone artifacts, we will attempt to determine whether this was the case. Can Lucayan cultural expressions, unique to the Bahama archipelago, be viewed as byproducts of the processes of creolization, and if so, why?
What Archaeologists Can’t See: contrasting ethnohistorical and archaeological data in Talamanca, Costa Rica in the 16th century (2018)
Archaeologist Francisco Corrales and myself recently undertook the study of the exploitation of natural resources and their exchange in the areas close to Juan Vázquez de Coronado´s route in 1564, traced from the Pacific coast to the Caribbean in Southeastern and Southwestern Costa Rica. This presentation aims to underline how resources of the different altitudes on both slopes formed an important part of the various activities carried out by the inhabitants during the 16th. century and...
What Does a Fire Giant Eat? A Zooarchaeological Analysis of Surtshellir's Burnt Faunal Remains (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. In the ninth and tenth centuries CE, a very distinctive and unique site was established inside the cave of Surtshellir. This lava tube was reputed to be the home of the mythological fire giant, Surtur and has been studied over the course of several years by a team led by the...
What Is Good to Eat Is Good to Translocate: The Intangible Dimension of Non-Native Animal Introduction and Consumption in the Pre-Columbian Caribbean (2019)
This is an abstract from the "The Intangible Dimensions of Food in the Caribbean Ancient and Recent Past" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Despite occupying the Caribbean since ca. 6500-6000 BP, Amerindians did not introduce continental animals to the islands until approximately 2000 years ago. In most cases, non-native taxa, while consumed, did not rival local marine resources in dietary importance; yet there is limited evidence to support an...
When Archaeology Meets History: Documenting the Conquest and Transition Period at Pachacamac, Peru. (2017)
Traditional accounts of the conquest of Peru are well known and universally accepted: in 1535, Francisco Pizarro – who had arrived two years earlier – decided to create a new capital in the neighbouring Rimac river valley, which would one day become the current city of Lima. In order to achieve this, Pizarro forcibly displaced all the contemporary inhabitants of Pachacamac, leaving this major Inka pilgrimage site completely abandoned. However, new finds recovered during the 2016 excavations at...
When Irish Eyes View Maya Classic Period Political Systems (2018)
Several debates have endured for decades within the field of anthropological archaeology as to the character of lowland Classic period Maya political organization. Scholars have been struck by the contrast between Maya regal-ritual centers possessed of impressive monumental architecture with the minimal references from the documentary record to any kind of bureaucratic organization. There is disagreement as to the scale of the larger Maya polities and whether or not some polities had begun to...
When Is Creolization? (2018)
Multiple episodes of identity transformation can be seen in the archaeology of Mona island. From the emergence of "Taino-ness" (cf. R. Rodríguez) in the 12th century, to the catastrophic (after S. Mintz) eruption of colonial identities in the 16th century. We contrast the dynamics and character of creolizations from a diachronic and material perspective by looking at the archaeology of 500 years of subterranean ritual landscapes of Mona. We ask whether an expanded use of the term creolization is...
When Technological Analysis Becomes a Setback: The Case of the Points in the Interior of São Paulo State, Brazil (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Historically, the shift from the study of form to the study of techniques was guided by the transition from the Cultural History approach to the New Archeology. This theoretical readjustment was incorporated into Brazilian archeology decades later, strongly impacting the way that the collections was studied. Today the reality is that, although lithic...
When the Volcano Erupts: Lessons from the Archaeological Record on Human Adaptation to Catastrophic Environments (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. How do repeated disasters shape and strengthen communities? The Tilarán-Arenal region of Costa Rica is one of the most volcanically active regions in the world, but despite the risk, from the advent of sedentary villages during the Tronodora phase (2000-500 BC) until the arrival of Spanish in the 16th century, people demonstrated remarkable resilience. Using...