Iconography (Other Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dawn Rutecki.

This paper queers archaeological interpretation by unpacking and destabilizing underlying assumptions in Southeastern iconography. While not focusing expressly on sexuality or gender in these representations, this research discusses the ways ambiguities in engraved shell iconography, more broadly, have been dismissed, glossed, and deemphasized. In part, this exclusion is unintentional and results from the amount of research that remains to be conducted on the vast body of images, but we need to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kelley Hays-Gilpin.

Over a period of centuries between about AD 1000 and 1540, Ancestral Pueblo communities in what is now the southwestern U.S. developed elaborate, iconic mural painting traditions. The most detailed and best-known murals were excavated in kivas (ceremonial structures) at the sites of Awat’ovi and Kawayka’a on the Hopi Mesas, Arizona, and at Pottery Mound and Kuaua near Albuquerque, New Mexico. These murals not only express ritual and worldview in the 15th century but inspire contemporary artwork...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tatiana Vlemincq Mendieta.

The topic of this work is the anura, i.e. frogs and toads, in Moche iconography. Its primary aim is to establish if the anura were, in Moche cosmovision, associated with rains and agricultural fertility. During the early stages of this project, I gathered data and interpretations about the anura, while at the later stage, I built upon these findings to establish a classification system for these amphibians. The objectives of the classification are: first, to create a comprehensive database of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Megan Leight.

Art-making is an essential element of Mesoamerican culture. Asserting the primacy of the art object as a site of inquiry can provide a fascinating framework for organizing, imagining, and interpreting the past. This paper considers art objects produced during the Late Classic (ca. 600-900 CE) by the Maya Ik’ polity in Petén, Guatemala. The elaborately painted surfaces with naturalistic figures, realistic color schemes, and detailed hieroglyphic inscriptions about artists, patrons, and regional...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erin Phillips.

This paper will examine one possible model for the use of pottery engraved in the Hemphill style at Moundville, the associations model. The Hemphill style is Moundville's local representational art style. The most commonly engraved themes in the style are winged serpents, crested birds, raptors, paired tails, center symbols and bands, and human trophies in the form of skulls, scalps, and the hand and eye design. It is suggested that these designs represent patron supernaturals relating to the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cherra Wyllie.

Group identity is visible in the archaeological record in the form of discrete burial practices, site planning, ceramic and artifact assemblages, settlement patterns, and architecture. Yet notions of ethnic identity are multi-layered and complex; the more so during periods of intense migration and social upheaval . The Late Classic to Early Postclassic transition was one such period, characterized by observable changes in practices and materials. In Veracruz (at sites such as El Tajin, Las...

DOCUMENT Full-Text Sarah Jackson.

This resource is an application for the Post PhD Research Grant from the Wenner-Gren Foundation. This project investigated how Classic Maya individuals understood the objects that archaeologists characterize as 'artifacts,' and applied this Maya material perspective to modern archaeological practices in order to transform how we interpret excavations at Classic Maya sites. To accomplish this, the project focused on three activities: reconstructing elements of a Classic Maya perspective on the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Aleksa Alaica.

The Moche Period (1-850AD) is well known for its iconography with naturalistic depictions of a variety of different figures and themes. One aspect of the corpus that has been under-analyzed is the common representation of plant and animal life. The ceramic assemblages of the Moche depict numerous animal species from coastal, highland and Amazonian locations. Recent work conducted at the Larco Herrera Museum reveals that various animal species may have been considered important symbols of group...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David W. Penney.

This resource is a citation record only, the Center for Digital Antiquity does not have a copy of this document. The information in this record has been migrated into tDAR from the National Archaeological Database Reports Module (NADB-R) and updated. Most NADB-R records consist of a document citation and other metadata but do not have the documents themselves uploaded. If you have a digital copy of the document and would like to have it curated in tDAR, please contact us at comments@tdar.org.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tara Smith.

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...

DOCUMENT Full-Text Uploaded by: Chelsea Walter

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...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elizabeth P. Benson.

This resource is a citation record only, the Center for Digital Antiquity does not have a copy of this document. The information in this record has been migrated into tDAR from the National Archaeological Database Reports Module (NADB-R) and updated. Most NADB-R records consist of a document citation and other metadata but do not have the documents themselves uploaded. If you have a digital copy of the document and would like to have it curated in tDAR, please contact us at comments@tdar.org.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jerome E. Brooks.

This resource is a citation record only, the Center for Digital Antiquity does not have a copy of this document. The information in this record has been migrated into tDAR from the National Archaeological Database Reports Module (NADB-R) and updated. Most NADB-R records consist of a document citation and other metadata but do not have the documents themselves uploaded. If you have a digital copy of the document and would like to have it curated in tDAR, please contact us at comments@tdar.org.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Janusz Woloszyn.

Moche art served the purpose of not only disseminating specific content of a religious nature, but it was also a tool of social influence and control. Its iconography gives an exceptional opportunity to study the mechanisms of perceiving and presenting others (representatives of different cultural and probably also ethnic group) by a society which has not left behind any written documents for us. It is also interesting how these representations could be used in the process of shaping...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Angel González López.

The ways in which human societies create a sense of history and incorporate it into daily life varies through time. In the Late Postclassic Basin of Mexico for example, cultural groups perpetuated, but also abandoned aspects of the stories of their ancestors. The uses, causes and reasons for this practice depends on a combination of several factors. The use of the past and how it was conceived and incorporated into the perspective of the Mexica is of particular interest. Previous studies have...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Philip Drucker. Robert F. Heizer. Robert J. Squier.

This resource is a citation record only, the Center for Digital Antiquity does not have a copy of this document. The information in this record has been migrated into tDAR from the National Archaeological Database Reports Module (NADB-R) and updated. Most NADB-R records consist of a document citation and other metadata but do not have the documents themselves uploaded. If you have a digital copy of the document and would like to have it curated in tDAR, please contact us at comments@tdar.org.

DOCUMENT Citation Only James A. Brown.

This resource is a citation record only, the Center for Digital Antiquity does not have a copy of this document. The information in this record has been migrated into tDAR from the National Archaeological Database Reports Module (NADB-R) and updated. Most NADB-R records consist of a document citation and other metadata but do not have the documents themselves uploaded. If you have a digital copy of the document and would like to have it curated in tDAR, please contact us at comments@tdar.org.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Benjamin Bellorado. Kelley Hays-Gilpin. Laurie Webster.

This is an abstract from the "Approaches to Archaeological Footwear" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Twined sandals were the most long-lived yucca-cordage sandals used by Ancestral Pueblo people in the US Southwest, bridging the Basketmaker II (100 BC–AD 550) through Pueblo III (AD 1150–1300) periods. They were among the most technologically complex, ornate, and resource-intensive textiles ever produced in the region and also a key feature of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Susana Ramirez-Urrea De Swartz.

The Aztatlán Tradition is a widespread cultural and economical system in West and Northwest Mexico from AD 850 to 1300. The Aztatlán iconography is remarkable, not only because it is rich in the variety of images and icons related to the codices, but also because it reflects a concept related to the worldview of the Aztatlán groups (and others in Central Mexico and the Mixteca-Puebla region). Butterfly imagery seems to be part of it. Some of the ceremonial vessels used in rituals or found as...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Bobi Deere.

Marine shell was ubiquitous in the Mississippian Southeast. In an effort to shed light on where the shell originated, X-Ray Fluorescence analysis was done on a sample of Spiro engraved shell, and on Cahokian engraved shell. As a second line of questioning, results were separated by previously assigned styles, including Braden and Craig. At this point, sourcing with the Pxrf only points to either the Gulf of Mexico or the Atlantic Coast. However, interesting questions have arisen in the data...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joshua Englehardt. Michael Carrasco.

Interregional interaction often serves as a catalyst for cultural innovation. This paper explores the effects of interaction on the development of Mesoamerican scripts during the Formative period. Current models suggest that the transition from iconography to phonetic writing involved the recontextualization of visual symbols: motifs were excised from the pictorial frameworks in which they were usually contextualized and enclosed within the emergent textual–linguistic conventions and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only S. Spivey.

The zoomorphic wood carvings excavated by William Sears from the mortuary pond at the Fort Center (8GL13) site in South Florida are a chronically understudied assemblage. These artifacts are generally interpreted as totems carved into a single contemporaneous dock structure built above the mortuary pond, later excavated in various states of degradation. I propose a preliminary typology through which to interpret their function. Beyond that, I discuss the form the carvings individually take and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Donald Slater.

During reconnaissance in a dry cenote at the small site of Ceh’ Yax, Mexico, members of the Central Yucatan Archaeological Cave Project discovered an in-situ monument incised with a petroglyphic scene depicting a dignitary seated within a litter. Although litters are not commonly shown in Mesoamerican imagery, they do appear on lintels, wall graffiti, codex-style Maya vases, and as ceramic effigies. This paper will present an analysis of Mesoamerican litter iconography which will demonstrate...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rex Koontz.

While known primarily as an Aztec specialist, HB Nicholson was instrumental in beginning a dialog on regional iconographies. A key example of this dialog was his work on deity complexes. Building on his mastery of the ethnohistorical data, Nicholson’s work on deity complexes attempted to locate particular deity groups with certain regions. This essay looks at Nicholson’s hypotheses on Gulf Coast iconography and how those hypotheses have helped shape the regional iconographies now being...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Jackson.

This paper examines the foundational cultural infrastructure provided by seemingly quotidian objects in Classic Maya (ca. AD 250-900) contexts. These materials (things like ceramic vessels, stone benches, and mirrors) carry out prosaic tasks (e.g., containing, supporting, reflecting), but also higher-order relational work, taking on roles as non-human "persons," and as partners in social relationships. In this paper, I focus on these human-object relationships in order to recast our view of...