sacred landscape (Other Keyword)
1-10 (10 Records)
In this edited volume, Andean wak'as—idols, statues, sacred places, images, and oratories—play a central role in understanding Andean social philosophies, cosmologies, materialities, temporalities, and constructions of personhood. Top Andean scholars from a variety of disciplines cross regional, theoretical, and material boundaries in their chapters, offering innovative methods and theoretical frameworks for interpreting the cultural particulars of Andean ontologies and notions of the...
Constructing Social Memory: Inca Politics and Sacred Landscape in the Lurin Valley (2017)
We will discuss the characteristics and scope of Inca politics in the Lurin Valley by focusing on the results of excavations carried out by Makowski (2016) in Pachacamac with its famous Imperial Inca temple and oracle, as well as in the administrative center Pueblo Viejo – Pucara. The comparison of landscape transformed by Imperial infrastructure between the Highlands of Cuzco (Christie 2016) and the lower Lurin Valley allows to reconstruct the mechanisms through which social memory was...
Crafting and ordering the sacred space: Landscape, religion and political organization of the Manteño Society of Costal Ecuador. (2016)
Powerful chiefly elites seem to have been always concern with “crafting “ themes of ideological order to convince followers of their divinity character and justify being at the top of social and political hierarchy. This concern in some instances have resulted in the “institutionalization of belief systems forged by these elites. In coastal Ecuador, prior the Spanish conquest, the Manteño society developed a religion system that was based on the creation of a sacred landscape, around which, they...
The Montezuma Canyon Citadel Complex: A Major Prehistoric Religious Shrine (2015)
Spirit Bird Cave created a new model to evaluate Southwestern caves and earth openings in relation to prehistoric Native American beliefs about religion and sacred landscape. This model suggests that such concepts were major considerations in the choosing of settlement locations and foremost in the ideology of the prehistoric peoples. Site 42SA2120 in Montezuma Canyon, which fits this new paradigm, has not been formally described to this point. A survey of the site found evidence that the...
Reconsidering Sacred Landscape in a Small Depression at Dos Hombres, Belize (2016)
Dos Hombres, a Maya site in the Programme for Belize (PfB) conservation area of northern Belize, consists of three large architectural groups aligned in a north-south direction along a series of knolls. Where the southern end of Group C meets the surrounding bajo, a depression in small knoll protruding from the bajo yielded evidence of Maya utilization from the Late Preclassic through the Late Classic. The underlying bedrock was modified to create an amphitheater shape focused on a small cave at...
Ritualized Shatter: An Introduction of Obsidian to La Mipla, Belize (2015)
California State University, Los Angeles Archaeological Field Program in Central America conducted an investigation of a sinkhole containing a small grotto at the ancient Maya site of La Milpa, Belize in 2014. Excavation discovered that a rubble-cored platform had been built around the feature, formalizing the space and suggesting that it had functioned as a sacred landmark. During the excavations, a fairly dense concentration of sherds was encountered along with three dozen fragments of...
Teotihuacan Valley Project
The Teotihuacan Valley Project was designed to map pre-Hispanic and Colonial period occupations of the Teotihuacan Valley, the northeastern arm of the Basin of Mexico. Initiated in the 1960s by William T. Sanders, the project eventually produced five volumes of reports and many ancillary works, covering the ecology of the valley and the settlement patterns of its successive time periods.
Traditional Wooden Structures on an Ancient Quartzite Quarry Site, Manitoulin Island, Canada (2017)
Ancient quarry extraction locations on elevated bedrock outcrops continue to be used in the modern era for traditional activities such as constructing bent wooden sweat lodges and wooden shelters for fasting and meditation, which are built and maintained in modern times, over at least several decades. Other special "powerful" locations such as a cave in a Bar River Formation quartzite adjacent bluff are visited and used for spiritual activities by local First Nations members. As part of the...
What's new in Canadian Shield Rock Art (2016)
The last few years of archaeological fieldwork in Eastern Canadian Shield have allowed the identification of some new figures in the graphic content of sites already documented by other researchers in Ontario. But this context has led also to the discovery of new rock art sites in this province as well as in Québec. These rock painting sites but also the new engraving sites found help more than ever to better understand the variability and complexity of the iconographic themes privileged by the...
"What’s in that hole?" Engaging Subterranean Spaces in the Three Rivers Area of the Southern Maya Lowlands (2017)
The importance of subterranean space has been well established through studies of Maya sacred landscape. The Maya word "che’en" is used for any natural feature that penetrates the earth such as caves, cenotes, rock shelters, chultuns, sinkholes, springs and crevices, all spaces where the sacred nature of animate Earth are expressed. In the Three Rivers area of the southern Maya lowlands, non-cave Maya archaeologists appear to be at a loss on how to engage landscapes where sacred landmarks take...