Republic of El Salvador (Country) (Geographic Keyword)
2,276-2,300 (2,860 Records)
Termination rituals have been a well-documented practice among ancient Maya societies. Generally including the spread of broken artifacts on floors, the manipulation of ancestor bones, and the intentional destruction of architectural structures, termination deposits are believed to have served to symbolically "kill" a building at the time of its abandonment. Regardless of the nature or function of these different deposits, their frequent association with ashes, charcoal and burn marks clearly...
Ritual Landscapes and Cave Networks of Eastern Guerrero, Mexico (2017)
This paper presents an overview of the findings from the Formative period caves of Cauadzidziqui (pre-Olmec and Olmec-style paintings), Techan or Cave of the Governors (Olmec style monuments carved into the walls), and Ocotequila (Middle Formative painting), as well as Chiepetlan (Paleo-Indian, Late Postclassic-Early Colonial) and Cueva de las Lluvias (Classic period floor carvings). Also assessed is the importance of the locations chosen for Formative period caves in the sacred landscape of the...
Ritual violence or simply ritual? Evaluating the evidence for child sacrifice in Late Formative Period Peru (2017)
Highland mortuary practices during the Andean Late Formative Period (900–500 BC) in Ancash, Peru are poorly understood, in part because burials from this period are rarely encountered. Excavations conducted in 2009 at the archaeological site of Hualcayán uncovered a primary interment of a juvenile aged 5-6 years at time of death, dated in the range 806–540 calBC. The individual was buried with a necklace strung with bone and shell beads and bone spoons. Bioarchaeological analyses indicate the...
Ritualidad acuática en Media Luna y su relación con el juego de pelota (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Los Rituales del Juego de Pelota en la Costa del Golfo / Ballgame Rituals in the Gulf Lowlands" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. El análisis del contexto arqueológico sumergido, Media Luna, localizado en San Luis Potosí, México, ha permitido profundizar en los ritos mortuorios y en los actos de oblación que las comunidades de Río Verde realizaban en torno al agua durante el periodo Clásico y Posclásico Temprano...
Ritualism and Metal Objects in Michoacan (2017)
The area of the current state of Michoacan has been considered one of the most important producers of metal objects during the Prehispanic period. These objects are always related to various rituals because of its peculiar characteristics of color, sound, shape and even smell. From the analysis of more than 1,800 metal objects from extensive collections, particularly at the Regional Museum of Michoacan and the State Museum of Michoacan, by the Project Archaeology and Landscape of the Center -...
Riverbank Insights: Exploring Prehispanic Adaptation in Central Nicaragua’s Alluvial Landscapes through Archaeological Analysis and Local Wisdom (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Centralizing Central America: New Evidence, Fresh Perspectives, and Working on New Paradigms" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. “El Agua es Vida, si no hay Agua, no hay Vida” (“Water is Life”) says Doña Francisca (community of Huehuestepe, Mayales River Valley [MRV], Nicaragua). Today more than ever this sentence holds true, given water’s increasing significance in the global climatic debate. Rivers are essential to...
Rock Art As Place-Making Strategy: A Papua New Guinea Case Study (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Rock art and its ethnographic study provide important insights to understand people’s connection to place. In this research, formal and informed methods were used to analyze four stenciled rock art sites in Auwim village, East Sepik Province, Papua New Guinea (PNG). One thousand and seventy-seven rock art motifs were identified while the ethnographic data...
Rock Art Distribution in the Windwards in the Caribbean: A GIS Locational Perspective (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Interdisciplinary Approaches to Rock Art Documentation, Research, and Analysis" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Rock art locations in the Caribbean are well known and include caves, waterways, coasts, inland rock formations, and ceremonial enclosures. Mythological (caves as centers of origin and fertility) and practical considerations (guardians of fresh water sources) have been offered as general explanations for...
Rock Art in Northern Sonora between Stones and Pigments: Preliminary Archaeometric Analysis (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Interdisciplinary Approaches to Rock Art Documentation, Research, and Analysis" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Sonora has a great concentration of rock art in North America. In order to advance in the analysis and documentation of the rock art groups, the project “Cave Documentation and Patina Study in Northern Sonora” was proposed, focused on Cucurpe (Sierra Madre Occidental) and Caborca (Sonoran Desert). The...
The Rock Art of Haitian Vodou (2017)
This research is part of a larger ethno-archaeological investigation of the use of caves in modern Haitian Vodou rituals in Northern Haiti. This paper explores the modern rock art left in the caves as a result of Vodou ceremonies, in particular paint and veve (veve are symbols drawn out with cornstarch used to call various spirits to ceremonies, and are an intrinsic part of Vodou). The art in question included both permanent and ephemeral works, ranging from simple graffiti to caves painted...
The Rock-Art of Central-West Brazil: New Studies from Chapada dos Guimarães / MT (2018)
A new project carried out in the region of the Rio Vermelho / São Lourenço river basin in the central-western region of Brazil started in 2016. This project focus on the studies of the initial stages of the establishment of the hunters gathers groups in this region. It is intended through excavations, surveys and research in rock art to show patterns of the peoples who inhabited that region. The first systematic field surveys within this project, entitled "Archeology in the Pantanal region"...
The Role of Altica in Exchange and Interactions during the Early Middle Formative in Central Mexico (2017)
Interaction was important early in the development of complex societies during the Formative period in Mesoamerica. Despite its small size, Altica was integrated into Early-Middle Formative exchange networks as it obtained some ceramics, obsidian blades, and ornaments of exotic stone and exported Otumba obsidian that began to circulate widely at this this time. There likely were other early villages within proximity to the Otumba source engaged in procuring obsidian for trade to other sites, but...
The Role of Infrastructure in Wari State-Making in Southern Peru (2017)
In southern Peru, the transition from the Early Intermediate to the Middle Horizon during the seventh century A.D. was marked by the expansion of Wari state colonists and influence from the Ayacucho heartland. Andeanists have long postulated the role of climate change and drought during this initial state expansion, while issues of chronology complicate this issue. Here, we reevaluate the radiocarbon data from the early Wari colonies of Cerros Baúl and Mejía in the upper Moquegua Valley in...
The Role of Isometric Scaling on Stone Projectile Point Durability: An Experimental Assessment (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The experimental study of stone projectile points created via flintknapping has shed light on issues of culture, penetration, durability, aerodynamics, resharpening, among several other topics. Here, we present an experiment that systematically assesses the role that isometric scaling, i.e., size, plays in stone point durability. Thirty obsidian projectile...
The Role of Kinship Networks and the Lowland Ecology in the Interpretation of the Caribbean Archaeology of Greater Chiriquí (2018)
Archaeological investigations in the Caribbean region of Greater Chiriquí conducted over the last two decades have documented occupations dating to the second millennium BCE. Similarities in material culture suggest local and trans-isthmic cultural relationships within Greater Chiriquí and a pattern of scattered hamlets associated with the exploitation of marine and lowland ecosystems. In order to provide a model for this settlement pattern, we offer a theoretical model based on ethnohistorical...
The Role of Offerings in Interpreting Maya Mortuary Ritual: Bioarchaeological Analysis at Xultún (2017)
Bioarchaeological analyses in the past have worked to investigate and contextualize human remains in the broader realm of ancient Maya mortuary practices. Offerings are a common component of Maya ritual; however, the role of human offerings is still not understood in its entirety. In the 2014 field season at Xultún, Petén, Guatemala, three sets of human remains were excavated within the Los Arboles structure, a pyramid complex to the north of the site. In this paper, I discuss the results of...
The role of pedogenesis in palaeosols of Mexico basin and its implication in the paleoenvironmental reconstruction (2019)
This is an abstract from the "The Legacies of The Basin of Mexico: The Ecological Processes in the Evolution of a Civilization, Part 1" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Most of the paleoenvironmental information for the Basin of Mexico for the basin comes from sedimentary proxies, which unfortunately are incomplete for the terminal Pleistocene and the Holocene. In this paper, we present a temporal and spatial reconstruction of past soil cover in the...
The Role of Short-Term and Catastrophic Climatic Events and Human-Induced Landscape Change in Society Island Cultural Transformations (2018)
As studies of sustainability and resilience in pre-contact Polynesian societies proliferate, records of small-scale and large-scale environmental change are being refined. Yet the question of what drives social change, human actions or climatic factors, is still quite hard to discern. My case study focuses on non-human agency, particularly eroding landforms and climatic conditions, as forces of change in pre-contact East Polynesia. A Society Island case study outlines varied human responses to...
The Role of Social Memory in Everyday Bodily Practices of Pottery Production and Consumption during the Late Moche Period (500 – 800 AD) on the North Coast of Peru (2017)
Often the term ‘social memory’ conjures up ideas of grand commemoration events such as statues, museums, large scale construction and other public displays to remember the collective past. We must not forget, however, the seemingly mundane daily practices that help to create, maintain, and change society while simultaneously forming social identities. This study looks at the Late Moche period (500 – 800 AD) on the North Coast of Peru. It was a time of immense social, religious, and political...
The Role of the Toad in the Middle Horizon Andes: A Chemical and Iconographic Analysis (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Seeing Wari through the Lens of the Everyday: Results from the Patipampa Sector of Huari" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Here we present preliminary findings of chemical analyses performed on a Middle Horizon pottery sherd (c. 600-1100 AD). The sherd originates from the capital region of the Wari and has the striking iconographic representation of either a frog or a toad with visual indications of preserved residues....
The Role of Women Following a Community Archaeology Project in Agua Blanca, Ecuador (1979-2018) (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Working with the Community in Ecuador" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Agua Blanca community has participated in one of the most successful and sustainable community archaeology projects in Ecuador. Since the start of excavations in the Manabí region in 1979, archaeologist Collin McEwan and Maria-Isabel Silva have worked collaboratively with community members to excavate, interpret, and present findings about the...
Ronquin Re-Visited Yet Again: New Radiocarbon Dates and Their Implication for Orinocan Ceramic Chronology (2018)
A series of radiocarbon dates obtained recently from carbonized encrustations on ceramics sheds new light on the Barrancas to Ronquin ceramic sequence, a chronology that has been long contested in the Orinoco River Valley by many investigators. These new radiocarbon dates clearly argue that the so-called "long chronology" suggested by Rouse and Roosevelt for the La Gruta to Ronquin sequence developed for the Middle Orinoco River, a chronology that was argued to extend close to 4000 years, is...
Rooms, Compounds, Alley Dumps, and Neighborhoods: Intrasite Zooarchaeology on Peru’s North Coast (2017)
The increasing number of samples of zooarchaeological remains from the prehistoric Chimu settlement of Cerro La Virgen, on the North Coast of Peru, allow a comparison of consumption and discard patterns within and between households and neighborhoods. The information from this analysis adds to our understanding of economic and political realities of life in a community which would have to balance the demands of family consumption and the state tributes requested by the Chimu polity. Of special...
The Roots of Urbanization: Early Middle Preclassic Transformations to a Sedentary Lifestyle at Ceibal, Guatemala (2018)
Our research at the Maya site of Ceibal, Guatemala, has led to new insights into processes involved in the transition of mobile hunting and horticultural populations to a more sedentary lifestyle and emergent social inequalities. Like in other areas of the world, the first architectural constructions at Ceibal, were public-ritual configurations, built communally by a still mobile population around 950 BC. Sedentism developed gradually and may have first involved people with higher social status...
The Rose Room Workshop (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Advances in Global Submerged Paleolandscapes Research" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This presentation reports the outcomes of a workshop held at the Smithsonian Institution Museum of Natural History, Washington, DC, June 2019. The workshop identified stakeholders, collaborations, and synergistic relationships to establish and expand cooperative interdisciplinary and agency partnerships to encourage, advance, and...