Republic of Suriname (Country) (Geographic Keyword)
601-625 (913 Records)
In this paper we contrast and compare the development of pastoralism at two opposite yet complimentary geographical locations with a focus on pastoralist impact on the environment. In Argentina we present the evolution and development of pastoralism [c. 3,300-400BP] in the arid highlands of Antofagasta de la Sierra, as societies negotiated the shift from hunter-gathering to a more mixed, but increasingly, pastoralist economy culminating in late complex agro-pastoralist adaptations. Similarly in...
People and food: investigating the diet through isotopic analysis in a pre-colonial group from Piaçaguera shell mound (sambaqui), Brazil (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this study, we aim to present new evidence on the diet of pre-colonial individuals excavated in the Piaçaguera sambaqui (7,151-5,668 years cal. BP), one of the oldest shell mound found on the Brazilian coast. Previous isotopic analysis has shown that, although there is a general preference for consuming marine fish, there are regional variations in the...
The People of the Lagoon: Sambaquis and Ecological Management on the Southern Brazilian Coast (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Human Behavioral Ecology at the Coastal Margins: Global Perspectives on Coastal & Maritime Adaptations" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Sambaquis (shellmounds) are conspicuous structures at ecologically productive and diversified coastal settings along the Brazilian extended seashore. We have studied one of those hot spots in some detail. At Santa Marta lagoon area, on the southern coast, mound builders have long...
People on the move: early peopling of Central Brazilian Plateau, eastern South America (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The aim of this presentation is to discuss the peopling process of the Central Brazilian Plateau through the study of archaeological sites located in the Middle Valley of the Tocantins River. The Central Brazilian Plateau is the region where there are the earliest dates available for the occupation of eastern South America; therefore, it is a crucial area...
PEOPLE3k: Demographic Boom and Bust Cycles of Coastal Hunter-gatherers Cycles Track Shifting Upwelling Conditions in Northern Chile (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Global Perspectives on Climate-Human Population Dynamics During the Late Holocene" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Extensive archaeological shell middens can be found throughout coastal northern Chile, where they span more than 9,000 years. They contain abundant terrestrial plants and shellfish remains and can often accumulate very quickly and/or episodically. We use multiple radiocarbon dates to measure local...
Performing the Moche Feast: Plants, Ritual Practice, and Spectacle in the North Coast of Peru (2017)
The site of San José de Moro in the Jequetepeque Valley of the North Coast of Peru is renowned for the discovery of several "Priestess" burials containing women interred with the material accoutrements of the goddess figure from the Moche pantheon. As a burial ground for the Moche elite, San José de Moro presents an excellent case study for ritual performance with burial-related ceremonies taking place concurrently with feasting. In this paper, we discuss the plant evidence for large-scale feast...
Periphery and Perspective: The View from Late Prehispanic Coastal Ecuador (2018)
The small country of Ecuador is sometimes categorized as part of the Andean cultural region and sometimes included in the Intermediate Area. Located as it is next door to archaeological behemoth Peru, Ecuadorian archaeology has frequently been overshadowed by that of its neighbor. Banal oversights, such as maps that show the Inca Empire stretched across the Ecuadorian coast, serve to emphasize the subordinate position of archaeology in the country to the north. Periphery, however, depends on...
Perishable Technology and the Successful Peopling of South America (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent research demonstrates that perishable industries―specifically including the manufacture of textiles, basketry, cordage, and netting―were a well-established, integral component of the Upper Paleolithic milieu in many parts of the Old World. Moreover, extant data suggests that not only were these synergistic technologies part and parcel of the...
Persistence and Material Mnemonics in the Cosma Basin: 5000 Years of Ritual Enactment in the Upper Nepeña River, Peru (2017)
The Cosma Complex is located in the Cordillera Negra at the headwaters of the upper Nepeña River Valley, Ancash Peru. Fieldwork conducted between 2014-2016 documented repeated reconstruction episodes associated with the reuse of monumental ritual architecture originally dated to the Late Preceramic (3000-1800 BCE). By the Early Horizon infant remains and other offerings were placed into earlier architectural contexts as a final capping episode on at least one mound. As settlement patterns...
Pervasive Landscapes of Inequality: Want and Abundance within a Hyperobject (2018)
As globalization matures, environmental, social, and economic factors continue to create ever-expanding landscapes of inequality. Among these drivers, human-driven environmental degradation has, for centuries, operated as a significant producer of inequality. Anthropogenic climate change today perpetuates and strengthens these multi-generational, regional-scale phenomena of landscape change. These processes, such as sediment erosion in Iceland during the past millennium, create a ‘second nature’...
Petrographic and Technological Analysis of Ancient Polychrome Ceramics from Upper Madeira River, Amazonia (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Andean and Amazonian Ceramics: Advances in Technological Studies" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Several researchers have been showing that the southwestern Amazon is a center of cultural innovation and diversity in lowlands South America. Archaeological studies carried out in the last decades have also revealed that the region has ancient centers of ceramic production. At the upper Madeira River, southwest Amazonia,...
Petrography, Production, and Provenance of Ceramics from La Blanca, Guatemala (2018)
The Middle Preclassic (900-600 BCE) was a critical time of political and social centralization in the Guatemalan lowlands. Of particular interest is La Blanca, one of the first polities to rise and show signs of regional influence and potential urbanization. To reconstruct everyday life I am using excavated ceramic refuse to observe dynamics surrounding three households. This, in turn, elucidates elements of La Blanca’s political economy associated with the manufacturing and production of...
Photogrammetry All the Way Down: Multiscalar and Multiplatform Photogrammetry as Primary Spatial Registry in a Large Excavation Project (2017)
In 2016, a large excavation project was carried out at the site of Mawchu Llacta in the Colca Valley of southern Peru. A colonial reduccíon (planned town), Mawchu Llacta is a large site with plazas, chapels, a parish, and domestic compounds. These spaces all consist of complex standing architecture in varying degrees of preservation. Eleven excavation blocks were opened to better understand ritual and everyday life in the town. The extent and distribution of the excavations, however, presented...
The Piedras Rayadas of El Tigre, Honduras: Brokering Place and Cultural Memory (2024)
This is an abstract from the "The Problem of the Monument: Widening Perspectives on Monumentality in the Archaeology of the Isthmo-Colombian Area" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Grooved boulders seem to be an archaeological feature unique to El Tigre island in Honduras. Distributed around the small island, they are known locally as piedras rayadas, and feature in local oral histories. As durable traces, their meaning is everchanging, yet...
Pigment Mining for Color Meanings: El Condor Mine from Atacama Desert (A.D. 300-1.500) (2017)
The mineralogical richness of the Atacama Desert allowed for the development of an important set of mining-extracting and metallurgic, lapidaric and pigmental productive activities, which became significant activities in the sociocultural dynamics of desert dwellers. El Cóndor mine, an important hematite source located in the middle section of the Loa River, was exploited from the Formative Period (~A.D. 300) until Inka times (~A.D. 1500). In contrast to other mining sites in Atacama, El Cóndor...
The Pinta Ceramic Phase. Explaining a Paracas ceramic phase from Cerro del Gentil (2017)
During the last five years, we have developed an archaeological research program in the southern Peruvian coastal valley of Chincha. This project focuses on the rise of the Paracas society ca. 800-200 BCE. We excavated the monumental Paracas site of Cerro del Gentil located in the Chincha mid-valley where we recovered an important ritual context in a sunken court related to the Pinta phase. The Pinta phase was defined by Dwight Wallace in 1950´s but not has been systematically described. In...
The Pipil/Nicarao Migration from the Perspective of Pacific Nicaragua: An Archaeological Critique of Mythstorical Mobility (2018)
Ethnoshitorical sources describe migrations from central Mexico of Nahuat and Mangue speakers, known as the Pipil/Nicarao and the Chorotega, who settled along the Pacific Coast of Central America in the centuries prior to European contact. According to these accounts the new groups introduced cultural and religious traits into settlements in El Salvador, the Pacific coast of Nicaragua, and northwestern Costa Rica. Beginning in 2000, archaeologists from the University of Calgary have investigated...
Pisanay and the Endangered Rock Art Traditions of Arequipa, Peru (2017)
Drawing on the archaeological excavations at the site of Pisanay, located in the Sihuas Valley of Arequipa (southern) Peru, this paper will situate the rock art at the site within the broader contexts of multiple rock art traditions in the region. These traditions include both painted and pecked images on rock surfaces, a wide variety of geoglyphs, mobilary art, and sacred offerings made to particular rocks and geographic landmarks that represent huacas (loosely ‘holy places’). Within the...
Place-Making, Erasure, and the Death of Kingship at the Ancient Maya Site of Pacbitun, Belize (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. During the Late Classic Period (550–800 CE) at Pacbitun, a sequence of events took place that changed the landscape of power and sacredness in the site’s core during a tumultuous time in the Belize River Valley. The sequence of caches and burials likely began in order to consecrate a new courtyard (Court 3) and establish the new center of power at the site....
Plants in Ancient Pots: A Comparative Study of Paleoethnobotanical Results from Unwashed and Washed Ceramics (2017)
Paleoethnobotanists study human-plant interactions in the past, including the role of plants in ancient foodways. Microbotanical remains (phytoliths and starch grains) enable the identification of many plants because their morphology can be diagnostic to the family, genus, and species. Microbotanical samples can be extracted from specific artifacts, such as ceramics, enabling a better understanding of their use. Paleoethnobotanists can thus discern associations between certain vessel types and...
Point Counter Point: Interpreting Chipped Chert Bifaces in a Terminal Classic "Problematic Deposit" from Structure A2 at Cahal Pech, Belize (2018)
Sixteen small chert bifaces are part of a Terminal Classic (AD 800-900) peri-abandonment "problematic deposit" recovered just above the surface near the western base of Structure A2 at the ancient Maya site of Cahal Pech, Belize. The results of stylistic, technological, and use-wear analyses performed on these chert artifacts indicate: 1) production from locally available stone; 2) five different tool styles; 3) evidence for some tool curation/re-sharpening; and 4) wear patterns on some of the...
Points of Early Human Mobility: A Preliminary Synthesis of Paleo-Central American Sites (2018)
This poster addresses an understudied area relevant to the initial peopling of the Americas: what are the earliest indications of human activity in Mesoamerica (particular emphasis on Guatemala)? Its geographic location and its relatively narrow expanse make the southern half of Middle America the natural stage to funnel terrestrial and coastal/riverine routes of early human migrations. Despite this consideration, archaeological research targeting Paleoamerican horizons [pre-12,800 BP] in this...
Political Ecology Materialized in a Medieval Icelandic Landscape (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Materializing Political Ecology: Landscape, Power, and Inequality" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Past ecological and political-economic changes are embedded in the materiality of the landscape, and investigating correlations between such changes can suggest how relationships between ecology and economy were structured and managed within past societies. Iceland was first settled in the late ninth century by wealthy...
The Political Ecology of Camelid Pastoralism by Wari and Tiwanaku Colonists in the Moquegua Valley, Peru (2017)
The Moquegua Valley in southern Peru was the locale where the rival early imperial states of Wari and Tiwanaku established provincial colonial centers. Both Wari and Tiwanaku colonists concentrated their settlements in the low to mid-sierra elevations of the valley, elevations that are not modern zones of camelid husbandry. The political ecology of imperial settlement at this elevation fostered the development of local systems of camelid pastoralism that were significant economic components for...
Politics along the Rivers: An Example from the Gulf of Fonseca, Honduras (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Reconstructing the Political Organization of Pre-Columbian Nicaragua" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The relationship between environment, politics, and economies has often been observed in the archaeological record. In the Gulf of Fonseca, where archaeological sites concentrate around mangrove swamps, rivers and estuaries; politics were intricately tied to the affordances of riverine systems. Based on the ceramic...