Department of Martinique (Country) (Geographic Keyword)
901-925 (1,347 Records)
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’...
Petroglyphs in the Lower Pecos Canyonlands: Preliminary Analysis of Context, Style, and Chronology (2019)
This is an abstract from the "The Art of Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Petroglyphs have been an understudied form of rock art in the Lower Pecos canyonlands of Texas, in large part due to the small number of sites known to include carved, incised, or pecked designs. The most famous petroglyph site in the region is Lewis Canyon, where over 1,000 figurative petroglyphs were pecked into the limestone bedrock. Aside from Lewis Canyon...
Petrographic Analysis of Pre-Columbian Pottery From Nevis, Eastern Caribbean (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Cross-Cultural Petrographic Studies of Ceramic Traditions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Prehistoric Amerindians in the Eastern Caribbean often used local materials in the manufacturing of ceramics, and in some cases, transported these as they migrated. Given the ubiquity of ceramics in the Caribbean, they are useful in discerning past movements, and spheres of interaction. However, studies of this nature are scarce...
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...
Pictographs on Artery Lake, Bloodvein River System, Extreme Northwest Ontario, Canada: (2018)
The pictographs of the Bloodvein River, Artery Lake, Ontario offer an important view of rock art design and purpose during the late prehistoric period and perhaps continuing well into the nineteenth century. All images are finger applied and utilize iron oxide based pigment. The sites appear to be of varying function. The largest and most complex consists of seven or eight panels and may reveal a narrative of healing associated with the Fourth Degree of the Midewiwin or Ojibwe Grand Medicine...
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....
A Plan to Revive a Failed Stewardship Program (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Site Stewardship Matters: Comparing and Contrasting Site Stewardship Programs to Advance Our Practice" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Site stewardship looks different in every state based on how the archeology programs are organized. Public archaeological networks, archaeological surveys, SHPOs, state archaeologist offices, academic departments, and volunteer organizations are connected in infinite configurations...
Plantation Environments and Economics: Household Food Practices at Morne Patate (2017)
The dynamics of household economies provide an important window into processes of social, economic, and environmental change in plantation settings. This paper examines household food production and consumption activities and the use of local landscapes at Morne Patate to better understand the relationships between daily life, landscape use, and the broader political economic changes that influenced plantation life on Dominica over several generations of occupation. I present the results of...
Planting a Seed and Watching It Grow: Planning an Open Textbook from Scratch (2018)
This paper outlines how this open textbook moved from an idea to a reality over the past year. As a non-traditional project in archaeology, the infrastructure for such a project had to largely be framed from scratch, including a social media and marketing campaign as well as a process for co-authoring and reviewing chapters. Although the textbook is not yet completed, lessons learned along the way will be offered with the hope that sharing our model will inspire more open textbooks in our field.
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...
Poison or Pleasure: The Archaeology of Tobacco and Sugar (2018)
The deep history behind what anthropologist Sidney Mintz refers to as the "stimulant or drug foods" reflects collective choices that transformed the socioeconomic fabric of early modern life. The archaeological record can reveal the physical manifestation of such choices through the myriad assemblages of artifacts that bear witness to the adoption of stimulant foods and also the tragic outcomes from the production of these commodities. In this paper, I will discuss my long-term archaeological...
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...