Republic of El Salvador (Country) (Geographic Keyword)
601-625 (2,850 Records)
This presentation reassesses the chronology and meaning of the inscription on the hieroglyphic step of the Ante structure at Copan, Honduras. The analysis was made possible by a high-resolution 3D scan of the step produced in 2011. The new interpretation indicates that the city of Copan underwent a re-foundation event upon the accession of its eighth ruler, Wi’ Ohl K’inich. The known contexts of similar statements are discussed along with the implications of several possible translations for our...
COPING WITH CONFLICT: DEFENSIVE STRATEGIES AND CHRONIC WARFARE IN THE PREHISPANIC NASCA REGION (2017)
Warfare was a significant sociopolitical practice throughout the Andes during the Late Intermediate Period (AD 1000–1450). A salient research topic within broader investigations of conflict is how populations cope with chronic warfare. This article utilizes statistical and GIS-based analyses of architectural features and settlement patterns to reconstruct defensive coping mechanisms among fortified settlements in the Southern Nasca region of Peru. Specifically, this research evaluates how...
Copper Trade Network from Canada to South America (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Pre-contact copper manufacture and trade in the Americas is poorly understood. To remedy this, over the last decade I have compiled a master database of over 85,000 pre-contact copper artifacts recovered from across the Americas, with source materials from museums, online, and private collections. I present an overview of the pre-contact copper industry in...
Coral Islands, High Islands: A Case of Continued Contact and Cultural Divergence in East Polynesia (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Rethinking Hinterlands in Polynesia" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Polynesian atolls are often viewed as outlying provinces or "outer Islands" as compared to larger high islands. These often remote and diminutive coral islands are, and were, home to relatively small populations. Many coral island groups trace ancestry to, and had sustained contact with, high islands. These past connections and modern sociopolitical...
Core-Hinterland dynamics in New Zealand Archaeology (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Rethinking Hinterlands in Polynesia" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The concept of ‘hinterland’ encompasses ideas of distance, marginality and challenge and is often contrasted with ‘core’, which in turn implies centrality and resource richness. In this paper we address the applicability of both these concepts in New Zealand and examine their role in understanding long-term Maori history. We suggest that high...
Cosmic Ventures of the Olmec Dwarf: An Analysis of the Dispersal and Transformation of Dwarf Imagery within Olmec Iconography (2017)
The formative period dwarf imagery in Mesoamerica offers an exemplary opportunity to further our understanding of the Olmec cosmovision and how their ideology spread throughout the region. This study specifically compares the three monumental sandstone dwarfs at La Venta to the portable dwarfs carved in stone and sculpted from clay found elsewhere within the Olmec exchange network. I discuss the origin of Dwarf imagery within the Olmec artistic style through an analysis of stylistic trends and...
Cosmogenesis in the Mixtec Codices: Visual Narratives of Place, Emergence, and Movement (2017)
In the Postclassic Mixtec codices, the integral and integrative themes of place, emergence, and movement converge. Neglected in much of the scholarly literature on the sacred books of the Mixtec, the visual representation of supernatural and historical figures’ emergence and movement from place to place is an integral component of the codical narratives. Emergence and movement are tethered to and integrative with Mixtec portrayals of place, of various kingdoms through a standardized glyphic sign...
Cosmogonía y ritualidad en contextos funerarios de Tamtoc, SLP, México (2017)
En antropología, la muerte es considerada un hecho natural universal con expresiones socioculturales fundamentadas en la cosmogonía de cada grupo humano, y es a través de los rituales funerarios que se marca la conexión simbólica entre la vida y la muerte, que se expresa tanto en el plano material-biológico (cadáver y lugar de destino final) como en el espiritual (trascendencias, creencias y escatología); en tanto que, la muerte, como hecho objetivo y como hecho cultural ritualizado, delimita el...
Cosmology at Home: Ritual Caching within the Residences of Late Preclassic Noh K’uh, Chiapas Mexico (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Late Preclassic (400 BC - A.D. 200) site of Noh K'uh is located in the Mensäbäk basin, 30 kilometers west of the Usumacinta River. Noh K'uh was a small ceremonial center composed of several residential groups centered around a ceremonial plaza. Noh K’uh’s location near the western edge of the Maya lowlands placed the residents near contemporary...
Cosmology, Calendars and Horizon-Based Astronomy in Ancient Mesoamerica (2015)
Cosmology, Calendars, and Horizon-Based Astronomy in Ancient Mesoamerica is an interdisciplinary tour de force that establishes the critical role astronomy played in the religious and civic lives of the ancient peoples of Mesoamerica. Providing extraordinary examples of how Precolumbian peoples merged ideas about the cosmos with those concerning calendar and astronomy, the volume showcases the value of detailed examinations of astronomical data for understanding ancient cultures. The volume...
Costly Signaling, Cost Masking, and the Classic-Postclassic Transition: Slipped Ceramics and other Media in the Context of the Petén Lakes Region, Guatemala. (2016)
Costly signaling theory indicates that highly visible acts of public generosity and display, which exact costs not easily recouped, however, can provide social benefits to those engaged in such acts. Such signaling is associated with the strength or fitness of the provider. Analyzing slipped and fineware ceramics in display contexts, and obsidian use and architecture, this presentation explores how Maya elites and rural sub-elites engaged in costly signaling and modified their actions by cost...
Costs of Acquiring Lithic Materials in High Altitude Environments (Northwestern San Juan Province, Argentina): A GIS-Based Evaluation (2017)
Based on geo-archaeological studies on the Argentine–Chilean border in the southern Andes, a method is proposed for ranking lithic sources based on the quality of the material, cost of accessibility, and location along travel corridors. In the upper Las Taguas river valley (northwestern San Juan Province, Argentina, 5500–3700 masl), 32,622 lithic artifacts from 30 sites were analyzed to study the variation in the use of seven lithic sources between 10,000 and 500 cal BP. We ranked the time...
Costume and Identity in Pacific Nicaragua (2017)
Sixteen years of archaeological research along the shore of Lake Cocibolca in Pacific Nicaragua has yielded a wealth of material culture relating to domestic practice and mortuary rituals for the period from AD 500 to 1250. Among these are numerous objects of adornment, such as pendants, beads, and ear ornaments. Additional costume information is found on small ceramic figurines, primarily of females with painted decoration indicating clothing, hairstyle, tattooing, and jewelry. Based on initial...
“The Cottage,” a Small Viking Age Dwelling in North Iceland (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Small Dwellings on the Viking Frontier: New Research from Kotið, North Iceland" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This poster serves as an introduction and overview to a poster session on the archaeology of Kotið (“The Cottage”), a small dwelling established during the initial Viking Age settlement of Iceland in the late ninth century. Kotið represents a previously unknown and uninvestigated site type in the early Viking...
The Country and the City: Explorations of the Relationship between Río Amarillo and Copan, in the Copan Valley, Honduras (2018)
Cities and the communities in their hinterlands are inextricably linked, and yet the objectives of their inhabitants can be starkly different. The archaeological sites of Río Amarillo and Quebrada Piedras Negras shared a fertile plain along the Río Amarillo and Río Blanco Rivers. Several scholars have suggested that the arable fields here may have acted as a bread basket for the urban center to their west. Research at Rio Amarillo has yielded evidence of strong ties to Copan including...
Craft Production at Cerro Baúl: Unattached Specialization on the Wari Frontier (2017)
This paper presents preliminary analysis and interpretations of a craft production space located within a single residential patio group on the summit of Cerro Baúl, located in the Moquegua Valley of Peru on the Wari- Tiwanaku frontier. Excavations in a patio group located close to a Tiwanaku temple exposed a dense artifact midden which included obsidian points and debitage, shell and lithic beads, burnt ceramics, and bone. Evidence of subfloor offerings, marked by multiple cuy internments in...
Crafting and Trading along the Banks of the Telica: Artisan Communities and Regional Interaction in Eastern Honduras and Beyond (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Postclassic Mesoamerica: The View from the Southern Frontier" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper focuses on the regional role that two artisan communities, Chichicaste and Dos Quebradas, played as producers of pottery and obsidian blades within regional exchange networks. Chichicaste pottery has been recovered from many Honduran sites as well as from El Salvador and northern Nicaragua. The wide distribution of...
Crafting Human/Hieroglyph Relationships in Classic Maya Contexts (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Crafting Culture: Thingselves, Contexts, Meanings" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The study of Classic Maya hieroglyphic writing (ca. AD 250-900, Mexico and Central America) has yielded rich understandings of texts in recent years through increasingly nuanced ways of reading, contextualizing, and interpreting hieroglyphs. Beyond examining hieroglyphic texts as culturally contextualized documentary sources, however,...
Crafting Process and Usage of "Axe-God" Jade Pendants in Pre-Columbian Costa Rica (2018)
The "axe-god" jade pendants form the majority of Costa Rican jade artifacts. These pendants were valued for their "celt like shape" and did not function as real axes. Interestingly, some pendants do have abrasions on their axe edges. Because of that, it has been proposed that prior to being reworked into a corporal accessory, some of these pendants had been used as real axes or other tools. The "axe-god" pendants consist of two parts; the superior part with decoration of human or animals, and...
Crafting, Identity, and Power: A Comparative Analysis of Late Postclassic Facial Adornment Use in Central Mexico (2017)
In pre-Hispanic Mesoamerica, individuals from diverse regions and social classes deployed facial adornments, such as ear spools and lip plugs, to materialize concepts of identity. Specifically, recent archaeological research at the Late Postclassic (AD 1250 to 1521) city of Tlaxcallan provides new insights into the role of facial adornments in a highly collective society. Tracing material sources reveals the inter-workings of regional and local economic interactions and local sociopolitical...
Cranial Vault Modification in the Mariana Islands (2018)
Cultural flattening of the posterior skull, rare in the Mariana Islands, was recently observed in multiple human skeletons from a Latte Period site in Guam. Prior to this study, only one case of possible artificial cranial modification was reported for this region. The cranium of a young adult female from Songsong Village, Rota, was described as having "asymmetrical deformation in the occipital region consistent with artificial shaping practices." In a review of the ethnohistoric literature,...
Cream Wares of the Southeast Maya Periphery (2017)
Since publication on the compositional analyses of Copan ceramics by Bishop and Beaudry in 2004 several scholars have addressed the manufacture and distribution of cream wares similar to those that are found at Copan. The additional accumulation of data usually results in more insights and better source attributions, but at times the complexities of compositional analysis can mislead interpretation. This paper presents highlights of greatly extended sampling and uses a geochemical perspective...
Creating and Curating a 3D Dataset: Establishing Categories for Ancient Maya Musical Instruments Using 3D Scans (2017)
The Maya Music Project is dedicated to documenting ancient Maya musical instruments throughout the Maya area. Over the past year and a half the project has been documenting instruments housed in both archaeological laboratories and museums in Guatemala, Belize, and the United States in order to better understand the types of musical instruments that were played by the ancient Maya. At the time of writing this abstract, the project has worked with over 250 musical instruments, and has made 3D...
Creating the Center, Interaction in the Central Karstic Uplands during the Preclassic (2017)
From roughly 800 BCE, evidence supports the development of a widespread regional interaction sphere centered in the Central Karstic Uplands. This paper discusses specific data regarding the origins of this network and the subsequent integration of the Central Karstic Uplands as an economic force in the Maya lowlands. Scholars have long recognized the strong affiliations among the major cities that comprise this network during the Preclassic. Recently artifacts recovered from sites point to...
The Creation, Racialization, and Perpetuation of Aztec and Maya Human Sacrifice Mythology (with a Case Study from Yucatán) (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Misinformation and Misrepresentation Part 1: Reconsidering “Human Sacrifice,” Religion, Slavery, Modernity, and Other European-Derived Concepts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the sixteenth century, European settler-colonists in the Americas developed tropes of barbarity that they applied to Indigenous American populations. Primary among these tropes were allegations of “human sacrifice” performed for millennia in...