Violence (Other Keyword)
26-50 (115 Records)
Recent bioarchaeological analyses of human skeletal remains from the Medio Period Casas Grandes region (AD 1200-1450) have demonstrated taphonomic indicators variously interpreted as massacre, violent persecution of witches, or anthropophagy. In this presentation, we re-examine taphonomic data from Paquime and within a larger southwestern perspective. We combine new approaches to demography and individual well-being with taphonomic and mortuary datasets from Paquime to evaluate the causes,...
Conflict and the Politics of Solidarity: Hierarchy and its Limits in the Late Precolumbian Andean Highlands (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Warfare and the Origins of Political Control " session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Premodern groups under significant external threat often developed a politics of solidarity, emphasizing group strength and shared responsibilities rather than vertical distinctions. This paper draws on evidence from the late precolumbian Andean highlands to illustrate how the demands of defense shaped political dynamics and leadership...
Conveying Inka Ideology of Warfare for Establishing and Maintaining Political Control (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Warfare and the Origins of Political Control " session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ancient empires relied on warfare to conquer other groups and incorporate them politically. However, they did not always resort to armed conquest and often annexed new territories through negotiation backed by the perception of the empire’s military strength, which also underpinned the consolidation and perpetuation of political control in...
Cooperation and Violence in Prehistoric California: A Brief Inter-Regional Evaluation (2017)
Inter-group cooperation in prehistoric California has traditionally been evaluated via the relative intensity of exchange--tracked archaeologically with shell beads and obsidian. Transported great distances (most commonly via down-the-line exchange) trade items in abundance imply amiable inter-group relations, if not actual cooperation. Violence, on the other hand, as represented in the ethnographic and bio-archaeological records, is generally assumed to represent hostile interactions between...
Crnobuki: A Garrisoned Acropolis (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Cal Poly Humboldt has established a relationship with the Museum of Bitola to conduct research in the Pelagonia region of Macedonia. The museum and Cal Poly Humboldt conducted an initial reconnaissance of several locations and established a research location in Crnobuki. The acropolis adjacent to the town is the location of an ancient Macedonian garrison...
Death that Endures: A Bioarchaeological and Biogeochemcial Study of Human Sacrifices from the Moche Valley, Peru (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This project investigates how rituals of human sacrifice performed by the Chimú Empire (AD 1000/1100-1450/1470) transformed in response to Inca imperialism (AD 1450-1532) in the Moche Valley of Peru. Recent discoveries of hundreds of sacrificial victims in the Moche Valley suggest that ritual violence was used to maintain the sociopolitical and religious...
The Decline of Darts in Late Formative Taraco (Southern Lake Titicaca) and Its Implications for the Rise of Tiwanaku Hegemony (2024)
This is an abstract from the "The Global “Impact” of Projectile Technologies: Updating Methods and Regional Overviews of the Invention and Transmission of the Spear-Thrower and the Bow and Arrow" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this paper, we argue that both arrows and darts were used in the Taraco Peninsula (south Lake Titicaca) until the end of the Middle Formative period (around 250 BC), after which arrow technology began to predominate. A...
Deer, Drought, and Warfare: An Isotopic Investigation of Hunting Strategies from the Eleventh through the Fourteenth Centuries in the Central Illinois River Valley (CIRV) (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Recent Advances in Zooarchaeological Methods" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This study explores the relationship between garden hunting and food security in the Central Illinois River Valley, an area plagued by endemic warfare and drought during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Located ~100 km north of Cahokia, the largest precolumbian polity in North America, the CIRV was composed of smaller settlements that...
Defensibility, Cooperation, and Centralization: A Comparative Analysis of the Interrelationship Between Warfare and Sociopolitical Organization in Late Intermediate Period Peru (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This research advances the current theoretical agendas of warfare scholars, overcoming the limitations of earlier social evolutionary theories and examining the interrelationship between warfare and sociopolitical organization in the Huamanga Province of Peru during the Late Intermediate Period (LIP, AD 1000-1450). Only through the analysis of this...
Defensive or Ritual Networks? A Preliminary Geospatial Analysis of Cerro Prieto Espinal in the Jequetepeque Valley, Peru (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Mountainsides formed powerful spaces for ritual, defense, and settlement, and Andean communities often considered them the very embodiments of their animate ancestors or wak’as. However, they remain understudied within the North Coast region despite their proliferation during the Late Moche and Late Intermediate Periods. This paper presents a preliminary...
Depopulation and Massacres: Bioarchaeological Evidence of Violence within the Ancestral Pueblo of the Southwest Region of North America (2015)
This paper investigates forensic data within the Southwest region of the United States for indicators of violence, conflict, and warfare related events. The main focus is the Mesa Verde region of the Southwest and other sites inhabited by the Ancestral Pueblo. In this area, I examine forensic evidence supportive of trophy-killing and cannibalism; both have documented evidence at other sites in the Southwest area. Different types of trauma, such as, cut marks and blunt force trauma are also...
Disability, Impairment, and Care: An Analysis of Trauma Patterns from Bezławki, Medieval Prussia (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The bioarchaeological analysis of trauma in skeletal remains provides insights into the lives and lifestyles of past populations. Conventionally, such analysis has focused on military-aged males, with less attention paid to other demographic groups. The late-medieval cemetery site at Bezławki, Poland, provides an opportunity for a relatively broad analysis...
Documenting Early Exposure to Violence and Physical Stress among Juveniles in the Late Prehispanic Andes (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Growing up during periods of chronic warfare can have long-term impacts on health and well-being across the lifecourse. Public health research has demonstrated how early exposure to violence or other physical stressors contributes to increased morbidity and mortality among children and adolescents. Within bioarchaeology, investigating the lived experience...
Dueling with Basketmaker II Spearthrowers: What Can We Learn from Mock Combat? (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Advances in Perishable Weaponry Studies: Developing Perspectives from Dated Contexts to Experimental Analyses" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Changes in weapon technologies are likely to affect many social dimensions. Understanding a society’s weaponry is critical for making inferences not only about hunting but also how these groups engaged in conflict. The role of spearthrowers and darts in hunting is becoming...
Dynamic and Diverse Roles and Identities of Women in Ancient Southwest Systems of Violence (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The definition of violence is unique to all societies. Violent behavior is thus recognized in myriad ways and observing it in past societies demands consideration of many forms of evidence. Interpreting individual roles in systems of violence requires that we look beyond weaponry, site destruction, male warrior burials, and lethal injuries. Our perception...
Early Mesopotamian Urbanism and Social Stress: Violent Conflict at Fourth Millennium BCE Tell Brak, NE Syria (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Warfare and the Origins of Political Control " session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Past urbanism is usually reconstructed as a positive development, with cities presented as locations of economic efficiency, technological innovation, and productive social networks. But past cities also presented challenges, as sources of disease, inequalities, and high mortality. At Tell Brak (NE Syria/northern Mesopotamia), urban growth...
An Exercise in Raw Power: A Bioarchaeological Perspective on American Violence & Westward Expansion (2016)
Bioarchaeologists have rarely marshalled data from historic American burial assemblages to explore the dynamics of violence in the borderlands West. This paper considers the social dynamics of American violence under Manifest Destiny through an exploration of ballistic trauma patterns documented in extant historical bioarchaeology literature. This study examines the lives of 42 individuals whose remains exhibit fatal gunshot wounds from across the mid-17th and early 20th century America. Trauma...
Fears, Frontiers, and Third Spaces: Rethinking Colonial Encounters in the Early Modern British Atlantic (2017)
The concept of the frontier is often understood to be by definition one sided- one group’s frontier is of course another’s homeland. The idea of the frontier is thus the sign of a failed imagination; a mote in the eye blocking perspective. But the notion of a frontier can also convey liminality and lawlessness, a place apart from rules and regulations, laws and orders. If there is any truth in this construction, then frontiers might also be understood as third spaces. In this paper I will...
A Flash of Silver in the Swamp: The Identification of a B-24 Crash Site from WWII in the Lowcountry of South Carolina (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. On Dec. 15, 1944, a B-24 took off on a night navigation mission from Chatham Air Field in Georgia, headed to Florida. The crew of nine were training to patrol the East Coast for enemy submarines. Fifteen minutes into the flight, engine #1 caught fire. The bomber crashed less than five minutes later into swampland in the lowcountry of South Carolina. This...
From Enfilades to Medieval Caves: An In-Progress Report from the Medieval Roman Archaeological Survey of Kalymnos (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Aegean island of Kalymnos was unsurprisingly transformed by conflict between Roman and Arab Caliphate forces through the early Middle Ages; atypically among its neighbors, the end of antiquity seems to have produced a more durable and connected Kalymnian community, compared to that which came before. This paper expands on earlier GIS analyses of the...
From Mountain Worship to Guarding the Sacred Lakes: Surveys of Cerro Canoncillo, Cerro Prieto Espinal, and Cerro Santonte (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Bridging Time, Space, and Species: Over 20 Years of Archaeological Insights from the Cañoncillo Complex, Jequetepeque Valley, Peru, Part 2" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. At the heart of the community, Cerro Cañoncillo and its lakes formed enduring sacred spaces across the landscape. In this paper, we explore in greater depth how the ceremonial centers of the region interrelated spatially and symbolically with...
The Fugitive Slave Act and the Refugee Crisis of the 1850s: A View from Lancaster County, Pennsylvania (2020)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Bridging Connections and Communities: 19th-Century Black Settlement in North America" , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 exacerbated the refugee crisis of the mid-19th century. While an untold number of enslaved people had fled into the northern US prior to 1850, the provisions of the law made residence in the northern states increasingly dangerous for all African Americans. As...
Geophysical Survey of the Friendly Fire Incident, French and Indian War, Pennsylvania (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Fort Ligonier, constructed in 1758, was the advance post and the last in the line of supply forts constructed for Brigadier-General John Forbes’ Expedition to take Fort Duquesne during the French and Indian War. A young George Washington was a Colonel stationed at Fort Ligonier. On November 12, 1758, there was a small skirmish between a British Virginia...
he Best Offense Is a Good Defense: Monumental Defensive Works at La Cuernavilla (2023)
This is an abstract from the "La Cuernavilla, Guatemala: A Maya Fortress and Its Environs" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The ancient Maya center La Cuernavilla is well known for its defensive features and its role as a fortress located between the Classic Maya cities of Tikal and El Zotz in the Buenavista Valley of modern-day Guatemala. Excavations of the defensive features as well as the analysis of the artifacts collected during excavations...
Heritage as Liberation? (2020)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Reckoning with Violence" , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. In this paper, I argue for heritage as liberation. I openly claim that some forms of heritage practice are inherently more meaningful and effective than others. Such practices include what I call substantive and coalitional archaeologies. I argue that although the Critical Heritage Studies Movement—to which many historical archaeologists...