Republic of El Salvador (Country) (Geographic Keyword)
301-325 (2,860 Records)
Archaeology continues to need the infusion of indigenous perspectives, not only to take responsibility for the discipline’s past in colonial contexts, but also to advance its ability to understand human histories – especially indigenous ones – in respectful, innovative, and inclusive ways. This need is particularly strong for those archaeologists who study Native American cultural and community life just before, right into, and well after the onset of European colonialism and for those who are...
Beyond the Points: Sociocultural Complexity Revealed by Non-Hunting Artifacts from Melting Ice Patches in the High Alpine, Greater Yellowstone Area, USA (2018)
The recovery of chipped stone projectile points, bows, dart and arrow foreshafts and shafts, and the remains of prey species—notably bighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis)—in direct association with melting Greater Yellowstone Area (GYA) ice patches illustrates that hunting was a primary activity for Native Americans at these features. The recovery of other, non-hunting related, types of organic artifacts at ice patches suggests a broader utilization of the alpine environment. Although fewer in number,...
Big Changes in Little Places: An Examination of the Political Strategies of Leaders at Late Postclassic Xaltocan, Mexico (2017)
During the Late Postclassic the Basin of Mexico underwent dramatic political and cultural shifts, chiefly due to the formation and rapid expansion of the Aztec Triple Alliance. Xaltocan was among the many regional centers to be conquered and incorporated into the Aztec state. Historical documents indicate that prolonged conflict ultimately resulted in Xaltocan’s conquest and partial abandonment, thus local leaders were not integrated into the new political framework and were replaced by Mexica...
Big Data and Possibilities for New Urban Comparisons at and Around Cahokia Mounds, USA (2024)
This is an abstract from the "*SE Big Data and Bigger Questions: Papers in Honor of David G. Anderson" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Situated in present-day Collinsville, Illinois, Cahokia Mounds is considered globally as the premier example of precontact American Indian urbanism in North America. However, understandings of Cahokia’s early population density, spatial arrangement, and scale are primarily drawn from relatively small areas within...
Big Plans for Small Pots: Development of an Organic Residue Analysis Protocol for Ancient Wari Miniature Wares (2017)
Excavations from the Monqachayaq sector of the site of Huari uncovered an impressive burial that contained over 300 miniature vessels. The vessels were offered by a people known as the Wari (c. A.D. 600 – 1100), an ancient culture thought to be responsible for one of the Andes first great empires. Even more remarkable, the vessels retained the desiccated remains of their contents. The anthropological insight that can be gained has direct implications for a better understanding of Wari practices...
Bioarchaeological analysis of an ancient Maya ancestral context at Cahal Pech, San Ignacio, Belize (2015)
Interaction of the living with the bones of the deceased is a tradition practiced in various forms throughout ancient and modern Mesoamerica. Among the ancient Maya the manipulation of the deceased body is associated with powerful ancestral rituals likely carried out to reinforce and legitimate sociopolitical power. Structures placed on the eastern perimeter of plaza groups often contain multiple inhumations and are interpreted as ancestral locations. Structure B1 at Cahal Pech, located within...
Bioarchaeological Analysis of Preclassic Human Remains Recovered from a Lime Kiln, El Mirador, Guatemala (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Recent Multidisciplinary Investigations in the Mirador Basin, Guatemala" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper presents the preliminary findings pertaining to the exhumation and bioarchaeological examination of a collection of Preclassic period human remains recovered from a lime kiln in El Mirador Basin, Guatemala. The disarticulated and fragmented skeletal remains of nine individuals were compressed into a...
Bioarchaeological evidence for diet in a Latte Period assemblage from Saipan, CNMI (2017)
Garapan, a Latte Period (A.D. 1000-1521) archaeological site in Saipan, Northern Mariana Islands, was excavated under mitigation efforts by Scientific Consultant Services, Hawaii in 2015. The recovery produced over 400 sets of skeletal remains, of which forty-eight were submitted for dietary bioarchaeological analysis in the Center for Archaeology, Materials and Applied Spectroscopy. This research focuses on the importance of marine versus terrestrial protein sources and introduced plant...
Bioarchaeological Research at Castillo de Huarmey, Peru (2017)
The Wari imperial mausoleum, discovered in 2012-13 at the site of Castillo de Huarmey, Peru brought to light remains of 64 individuals buried within the main chamber underneath and additional seven in the contexts directly associated with the mausoleum. The upper layers of the building also yielded a collection of human and animal remains. The collection of human remains brings a unique set of data for bioarchaeologists. The research performed so far include standard analyses like taphonomy,...
A Bioarchaeological Survey of Skeletal Tuberculosis in Prehistoric Southern Peru (2017)
Recent studies of pre-Columbian Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex (MTC) genomes identify pinnipeds as a source of human tuberculosis in South America (Bos et al. 2014). These results raise questions regarding the timing of this zoonotic transfer and the subsequent human host adaptation and dissemination of Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Here we present a survey of skeletal tuberculosis throughout the Osmore Drainage of southern Peru, where the pinniped to human "jump" had occurred by ~AD 1000....
Bioarchaeology and Genome Justice: What Are the Implications for Indigenous Peoples? (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Social Justice in Native North American Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper examines the theme of "discovery," used in relation to Indigenous lands and peoples to designate the respective claims of Indigenous peoples and the European peoples that colonized North America. In particular, I look at the domain of "bioarchaeology" and the construct of "genome justice" to explore how DNA science attempts...
The Bioarchaeology of Greater Chiriquí: Challenges, Finds, and Future Directions (2018)
Greater Chiriquí, the pre-Columbian cultural sphere encompassing western Panama and southern Costa Rica, has been subjected to intense looting activities since the mid-19th century. Nevertheless, archaeological exploration of the area to date has successfully contextualized the nature and transitions of non-perishable material culture. However, organic remains rarely survive in funerary contexts due to the high acidity of the soil, high humidity, and high precipitation in this region. Human...
Biocultural Evolution of the Oral Complex in Coastal Atacama and the Interplay of Selection, Plasticity, and Population Histories (2017)
Indigenous groups have inhabited and exploited the coastal valleys of the Atacama Desert since Paleoindian times. Contact with the altiplano began early on but marine-based diets were eventually supplemented by agricultural adaptations as influence turned to population movement over time. We propose that the oral complex was likely subject to some degree of selection early in the sequence in response to dietary demands, but would have been relaxed as diet diversified and softened. This trend...
Black Bodies and the Making of Race in Antebellum America (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Storeroom Taphonomies: Site Formation in the Archaeological Archive" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. University and museum collections containing human remains belonging to members of the African diaspora have recently come under scrutiny and for valid reasons. The curation of the bodies of Black individuals continues to inflict violence and reinforces the notion that Black people are objects, not humans. During the...
The Black, The Red: A Study of Two Maya Mural Pigments from the Petén Region (2017)
Black and red are foundational colors in Mesoamerican painting and scribal arts, often derived from easily accessible raw materials. Although their presence is ubiquitous, variations in chemistry and microscopic properties are data that tell a more nuanced story. This paper summarizes analysis of black and red colorants used in Maya wall paintings that contribute to observations regarding local traditions in manufacture, as well as individual variation in artistic practice. Reported results...
Blindfolds and the Eternal Return in Late Postclassic Central Mexico (2017)
Scholars have invariably interpreted the blindfolds worn by certain figures in Aztec painted manuscripts as a sign of—in their words—"transgression," "sin," and "punishment." This talk challenges the simplicity and inherent Eurocentrism of that reading. It is true that the Aztecs perceived a person’s mistakes to plunge him into darkness and chaos, and that blindfolds, at one level, symbolized that disorder. The cause of a moral error, however, was embodied by certain objects and substances that...
Bloody Sharp Rocks: Optimization of aDNA Extraction from Experimental Lithic Artifacts (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Species detection using DNA recovered from lithic artifacts could indicate the manner in which tools were utilized and ultimately enhance our understanding of the mobility strategies and subsistence patterns employed by past peoples. Geneticists and archaeologists in the 1980s and 1990s managed to successfully extract DNA from lithics, using both modern...
Blurring Historical Lines: Cultural Divisions in the Lesser Antilles (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This poster presentation complicates the cultural and temporal divisions of pottery types in the Caribbean. Specifically, this work seeks to elucidate the overlapping nature of Kalinago, Taíno, European, and Maroon pottery styles in the Lesser Antilles. Using archaeological material and data from La Soye, Dominica, and reference works from across the Lesser...
The Body as Machine, the Body as Commodity, and the Body as a Temple: Treatments of Enslaved African Laborers on Buena Muerte Sugar Estates in Cañete, Peru (2017)
From its arrival in Lima in 1709 until the abolition of slavery in 1854, La Orden de la Buena Muerte was among the largest slaveholders in the sugar industry of Cañete, Peru. Moreover, as an order explicitly founded to oversee the physical and spiritual well-being of marginalized communities, the Buena Muerte also played a critical role in public health programs throughout the region. These activities were grounded in fundamentally different, and often opposing, perspectives towards the...
The Body at the Washtub: A Bioarchaeological Reconstruction of Identity from a Purported 1849ers Oregon Trails Burial at Camp Guernsey, WY (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In late spring 2018, a team of anthropology students and faculty from the University of Wyoming, with support from the Wyoming Military at Camp Guernsey Training Base, recovered a historical burial from an eroding cutbank near Emigrant’s Washtub Spring. Members of the Oregon-California Trails Association marked the location based on interpretations of...
Body Histories, Historical Bodies: Adornment, Culture and Identity through Time (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Culturing the Body: Prehistoric Perspectives on Identity and Sociality" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The body is so many things simultaneously. It is an historical object, a site of experience and violence, a set of behaviors, and is both material and metaphysical. We cannot conceive of history without bodies. Bodily adornments add further nuances that are personal, symbolic, political, situational, and...
Body Mass Estimates of Dogs in North America by Geography, Time, and Human Cultural Associations (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Dogs of North America share a long history of interaction with humans, yet little is known about how humans managed their dogs prior to modern breeding practices that became popular during the sixteenth century. European colonists recognized a few indigenous dog “breeds” and described these dogs as primarily “wolf-like” in appearance and phenotypically...
Bona Fide: Advances in Ancient Maya Bioarchaeology from Belize (2024)
This is an abstract from the "“The Center and the Edge”: How the Archaeology of Belize Is Foundational for Understanding the Ancient Maya, Part II" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Bioarchaeological studies have taken a central role in developing our current understanding of the sociopolitical and economic organization of the ancient Maya. This is in large part due to advances in methods and theory that allow a deeper contextualization of the...
Bone Collectors: Personhood and Appeal in Human Remains Sales on Facebook (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Human Remains in the Marketplace and Beyond: Myths and Realities of Monitoring, Grappling With, and Anthropologizing the Illicit Trade in a Post-Harvard World" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The desire to own human skeletal remains has been prevalent for many years; in our modern technological age avenues for this market have exploded across the internet. This research focuses on Facebook groups dedicated to oddity...
Bone Modification Pattern Produced by the South American Carnivore Lesser Grison (*Galictis cuja) (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This study is part of an actualistic taphonomic project designed to characterize the bone modification patterns generated by native South American carnivores. We present the results of the bone modifications (skeletal representation, breakage, and tooth marks) produced by a captive lesser grison (Mustelidae: *Galictis cuja) that was fed 10 wild guinea pigs...