Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela (Country) (Geographic Keyword)
676-700 (1,154 Records)
In the early modern Atlantic World, core/periphery mercantile economics ascribed a marginal place for Iceland. The island's role in trade involved the production of low-cost bulk goods destined for markets mostly via Denmark into the 19th century. The focal area of this paper, the rural and upland Mývatn region, was in some ways socially and ecologically marginal even within Iceland. The growing environment was affected by unpredictable cold weather while volatile erosion zones hemmed local...
Moving Beyond: Using Methods of Assessing Holocene Environmental Change in Northwestern Guyana (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Archaeology on the Edge(s): Transitions, Boundaries, Changes, and Causes" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. To assess Holocene dietary changes we conducted isotopic analysis of human and faunal remains from seven shell mounds in Northwestern Guyana. We used stable carbon 13C and oxygen 18O isotope compositions data to assess the degree of dietary constancy as a proxy for determining the likelihood of there being any...
Multi-crafting in Coexisting Gallinazo-Moche Contexts at Songoy-Cojal, North Coast, Peru (2017)
Over the past few decades, it has been recognized that craft studies often overlook the social significance of crafts practiced concurrently. How does the selection of certain types of materials inform on the relationship between manufacturers and consumers? Does multi-crafting imply broader social relations? Or does multi-crafting imply locally meaningful social relationships through the various types of crafts produced? This paper explores the multi-craft traditions practiced in coexisting...
Multi-Scalar Analysis of Copper and Silver Production under the Inka: A Case Study from Northern Chile (2017)
Andean prehistory witnessed the development of numerous regional metallurgical traditions that were harnessed and significantly restructured as the Inka empire (AD 1400-1532) expanded along western South America. Taking the Tarapacá Valley of northern Chile as a case study, I analyze how imperial incorporation altered the production of copper and silver across multiple spatial scales. I begin at the regional level, analyzing how the procurement and transport particularly of silver-bearing ores...
Multiethnic Colonial Communities and Endogamy: Evaluating the Dual Diaspora Model of Moquegua Tiwanaku Social Organization (2017)
The Moquegua Valley Tiwanaku colonial enclave was comprised of two Tiwanaku-affiliated populations: camelid agropastoralists who used Omo-style ceramics and maize agricultural specialists associated with Chen Chen-style ceramics. Despite living in close proximity, Chen Chen- and Omo-style communities maintained distinct social and cultural boundaries for several centuries. Goldstein’s dual diaspora model suggests that Omo- and Chen Chen-style Tiwanaku colonists represent two separate but...
The Multiple Meanings of the Rock Art Landscape of Central and Southern Honduras (2018)
The physical landscape of Honduras was and continues to be home to a diverse group of indigenous groups, each with distinct cultural traditions, artistic styles, and sociopolitical configurations. In prehistory, this landscape was imbued with cultural meaning in a variety of ways, from the monumental to the perishable. This paper presents and discusses what we know about the rock art of central and southern Honduras, which contains a variety of iconographic rock art styles within a very limited...
A Multisite Assessment of Mobility in Coastal and Interior Nicaragua through 87Sr/86Sr Analysis (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Migration and mobility have long been topics of interest in Nicaraguan prehistory, but research addressing these inquiries in the Greater Nicoya has relied primarily on linguistic analyses and the comparison of artifact typologies. Archaeological science is increasingly benefiting from the use of strontium isotope analysis as a proxy for mobility and...
Mundus vult decipi: Caribbean Indigenous Art Past, Present, Future (2018)
The 1990s, with quincentenary ‘celebrations’ and two highly influential Taino art exhibits in Paris and New York (the epicentres of the pre-Columbian art market), heralded a seismic increase of indigenous Caribbean art forgeries. But these weren’t the first indications of an emerging market: Caribbean forgeries had been circulating since at least the 1950s. The artistic heritage of the pre-Columbian Caribbean still remains largely understudied, with far smaller-scale production than seen in...
My Grandfather’s Castanhal: Plants, Community, Territory, and Memory in the Brazilian Amazon (2018)
In contemporary Gurupá, a rural municipality in the Brazilian Amazon, life is largely shaped by movement of, and among, plants. Plants here are mobile, but spend most of their lives stationary. In this paper, I examine the relationship between people and plants – as living, but nonetheless spatially rooted elements of the landscape – in these agroextractivist communities. I explore the significance of planting and plant life in regulating territorial use and notions of rights, access, and...
Narratives of the Recent Past: La Playa Slum as a Case Study. (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Primary Sources and the Design of Research Projects" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The slum of "La Playa" in the municipality of Arecibo, northern coast of Puerto Rico, existed from the late 19th century to the mid 20th century. This study presents the results of researching this type of site using documentary sources that include maps, plans, photographs, population data and newspaper articles. The objectives of...
Native Raizal Heritage: Landscape Utilization and Cultural Patrimony on Old Providence and Santa Catalina Islands, Colombia (1629–Present) (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Building Bridges: Papers in Honor of Teresita Majewski" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The islands of Old Providence and Santa Catalina, located 130 miles of the coast of Nicaragua and around 8.5 square miles in size, have been a center of global trade, resource extraction, and military action since 1629, when the English Puritan venture capitalists of the Providence Island Company—whose shareholders also held stakes...
Natural Disasters and the Avoidance of Complexity: Arenal Villages in Comparative Context (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. Small sedentary villages were established by about 4,000 years ago in the Arenal area of Costa Rica. The egalitarian nature of internal organization continued until the Spanish conquest, with no evidence of significant inequality developing, socially, economically, religiously, or politically. However, they were subjected to...
Natural Processes and Anthropic Action: Compromising the Archaeological Heritage in the South-West of the State of Goiás (2017)
Studies performed in the South-West of the state of Goiás indicate that natural processes and anthropic action are impacting and jeopardizing the conservation of archaeological sites in the region, namely GO-JA-13 and GO-CP-16, both of which are part of two important archaeological areas in the Brazilian Central Plateau – Serranópolis and Palestina de Goiás respectively. These sites are of high scientific and cultural significance and, together with the intense landscape alterations over the...
Naturalizing Authority: Sociopolitical Inequality and the Construction of Monumental Architecture at Early Xunantunich, Belize (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Over the last decade, the Mopan Valley Preclassic Project has extensively investigated the Preclassic ceremonial center of Early Xunantunich, Belize. These excavations have yielded significant information regarding the construction of monumental architecture during the Middle and Late Preclassic periods, as well as data regarding early ritual activities and...
The Nazi Hideout of South America: Studies on the Teyu Cuare 1945 Neighborhoods (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The discovery of the Nazi refuge on the border of Argentina and Paraguay during 2015, built around the year 1945 and abandoned shortly after, led to work inside it first to demonstrate the hypothesis of use and chronology. Last year, the mapping of the area and the survey of the surroundings intensified, finding new structures and groups strategically located...
Nearshore Paleoceanographic Conditions and Human Adaptation on the Coast of the Atacama Desert (Chile, 25°S) During the Early and Middle Holocene (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Palaeoeconomic and Environmental Reconstructions in Island and Coastal Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The transition period between the Early and Middle Holocene is associated with important changes in climate and human dynamics around the world. The coast of the Atacama Desert (Chile, 25°S) is not an exception. Early Holocene archaeological sites show evidence of a generalized coastal economy that...
Neotropical Cervids Dietary Traits as a High-Resolution Tool to Understand Past Human Subsistence Strategies (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Recent Advances in Zooarchaeological Methods" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Cervids in Neotropics played a vital role in precolumbian subsistence strategies. The study of deer remains from archaeological sites, particularly their teeth, as biomarkers offers information about their behavior, environment, feeding preferences, and important events in their life history and by extension to the human groups that could...
Nested-Context Perspective of Craft Production: Middle Sicán Metallurgy (2017)
Different facets and stages of craft production commonly occur in different spatial loci regardless of differences in medium, technology, intensity and/or scale. Locational differences may be relatively minor with different facets or production stages being practiced concurrently, or masters and apprentices occupying different areas of a given room or workshop. While sheet metal preparation and alloying both require constant heat sources, the former requires a clean area protected from winds and...
Network Analysis in the Tairona Chiefdoms: Settlement Patterns and Social interaction in the El Congo Microbasin, Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, Colombia (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Archaeological Applications of Network Analysis" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper seeks to present the results of network analysis for the case of the chiefdom communities that inhabited the northwestern slope of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta from AD 400 to 1600 in the El Congo microbasin. Through the use of statistical algorithms in R language and databases in geographic information systems, this paper...
Networking: digital archaeology repositories in Argentina (2017)
The digitization of primary data in social sciences and humanities, including archeology, has been a central issue in the management of science in Argentina by federal agencies, public universities and private foundations. About this topic, Argentina´s National Research Council (CONICET) created the Interactive Platform for Social Science Research, an interdisciplinary space, that over six years has generated protocols related to digitization and ways to share these results under the concept of...
Networks of the Dead: exploring patterns of homogeneity and diversity in the precolonial Caribbean using network analysis (2017)
The precolonial Caribbean shows great diversity in burial patterns across time and space, making the interpretation of funerary behavior very complex. While some broad trends in funerary practices have been noted, a simple assessment of the frequency of different burial practices in the region reveals a range of body positions and body treatment, as well as burial location, and grave goods. In this paper we use statistical and network explorative approaches to map these variable practices. A...
Neutron Activated Analysis of Afro-Caribbean Ware Excavated Archaeologically from Six Pre-Emancipation Sugar Plantation sites on Anguilla and Sint Maarten (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper presents the preliminary results of neutron activation analysis (NAA) conducted at the University of Missouri Research Reactor’s Archaeometry Lab on coarse earthenware sherds recovered archaeologically from three pre-emancipation era plantation sites on Anguilla and three on Sint Maarten. Using sourcing studies, this research investigates...
New Approaches to Sambaqui Archaeology in Brazil (2017)
MaDu Gaspar and Paulo DeBlasis Sambaquis (shellmounds) have attracted attention since colonial times due to their monumentality, and to the presence of human burials and stone sculptures. Discussions on their natural or human origin dominated up to the 1960s, when debate shifted to cultural history and diet, and moundbuilders were taken as nomadic bands with shellfish-based subsistence. The 1990s, a time of changing paradigms in sambaqui archaeology, coincides with the coming of Suzy and Paul...
New Approaches to Study Health and Disease in the Pre-Colonial circum-Caribbean (2017)
The most frequent pathologies found throughout the circum-Caribbean before arrival of the Europeans are dental and periodontal diseases. To date, ancient oral health has been studied using a variety of techniques, and recently ancient DNA (aDNA) analysis of dental calculus (calcified plaque) has shown great promise in revealing not only (oral) health and disease, but also diet and the composition of the oral microbiome over archaeological timescales. In this paper, we present ancient metagenomic...
New Evidence for Ceramic Systems in Precolumbian Bocas del Toro, Panama (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. For several thousand years before the arrival of Spanish explorers in 1502, Bocas del Toro, Panama, was home to numerous vibrant cultures. However, this area has seen only sporadic archaeological study over the past century. While surveys and excavations have revealed several multi-period settlements, with complex, multiphase ceramic assemblages, Bocas del...