Household Archaeology (Other Keyword)
176-200 (270 Records)
Characterizing inter-household inequalities has long been a fundamental task of archaeology, but a fine-tuned measure of household wealth is often troubled by the inability to account for time or demographics in the archaeological record. This project tests the ways that Iceland, settled by Norse populations between A.D. 870 and 930, provides a temporally-sensitive mode of measuring household wealth through average rates of midden and architectural accumulations while also providing a context...
Microartifact Analysis: An Application at Pampa La Cruz, Huanchaco, Peru (2018)
For decades archaeologists have been trying to develop methodologies that will help them determine what activities took place in and around ancient structures. Since people tend to clean activity areas, especially those that are used repeatedly, visible artifacts are rarely discovered in the context where they were originally used. Microartifact analysis focuses on the tiny fragments (<1 cm) of ceramics, bone, lithics, shell and other microartifacts that are produced as a result of human action....
A Microbotanical View of Classic Period Households in Central Yaxuna, Yucatán, Mexico (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The ancient Maya city of Yaxuna was a political and economic center of the northern lowlands in the Middle to Late Preclassic periods (1000 BC–AD 250), and residents continued to occupy the city through the Classic period (AD 250–900) amid geopolitical shifts in the region tied to the rise of Coba and the Late Classic (AD 600–800) construction of a...
Mind the Gap: Occupation at Angkor Wat and Implications for the decline of Angkor (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Paradigms Shift: New Interpretations in Mainland Southeast Asian Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Angkor Empire controlled or influenced much of mainland Southeast Asia from the 9-15th centuries CE. Traditionally, scholars have dated the end of the Angkor Empire to 1431 CE, when the capital was sacked by the kingdom of Ayuddhaya in Siam (Thailand). More recent archaeological work has also demonstrated a...
Mollusk Foraging and Gendered Labor in Seventeenth-Century Guam, Mariana Islands (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Coastal Environments in Archaeology: Ancient Life, Lore, and Landscapes" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The archaeological investigation of gendered labor in traditional households in the Mariana Islands is still in a nascent stage of development. Archaeological field school excavations by the University of Guam Micronesian Area Research Center and the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa yielded a rich assemblage of...
My Collegial Interactions With Mary Beaudry (2022)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "“Historical Archaeology with Canon on the Side, Please”: In Honor of Mary C. Beaudry (1950-2020)" , at the 2022 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Mary Beaudry was hired at Boston University in 1980, shortly after I was hired at University of Massachusetts/Boston in 1978. We became friendly colleagues, shared drives to conferences and worked together in several professional capacities, including as founding members of the...
Navigating the Daily Lives in Plazuela Groups: Early Excavations in the López Plaza at the Classic Period Maya Site of El Palmar, Mexico (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The data presented in this paper are results from the 2022 field season at the López Plaza, a small plazuela group located within the site center of El Palmar. Fieldwork included test pit excavations, shovel test pits, and geophysical prospections. Lidar images show that the López Plaza has two separate plaza spaces and approximately eight structures and...
Negotiations in the Ritual and Social Landscape of Actuncan, Belize (2018)
Our understanding of the ancient Maya is informed to a great extent by the material remains of ritual performance in both domestic and public contexts. Maya populations throughout Mesoamerica were united by a shared cosmology patterning the timing, location, and material aspects of ritual performance. Yet, ritual was not a static or rigid construct, dutifully replicated across populations. At the site of Actuncan, Belize, we find that aspects of domestic ritual cycles, - including form, content,...
Neighborhood Integration in Low Density Cities Which Follow a Divergent (‘Outside-In’) Urban Trajectory (2018)
One relatively understudied aspect of neighborhood integration in ancient cities relates to the divergent trajectories along which cities form. In some ancient cities, the urban periphery appeared as autonomous communities prior to the development of a center, representing an ‘outside-in’ model of urbanism. Such contexts provide a valuable case study for investigating neighborhood integration into cities, due to a clear comparative temporal threshold (before and after incorporation). This...
Neighborhood Organization in Early States: Exploring Spatial Variability at El Palenque (2018)
The late Formative polity centered at the El Palenque site, near San Martín Tilcajete, Oaxaca, Mexico was a densely populated settlement. The site was founded in the late Monte Albán I phase (300-100) during a period of hostility and violent conflict. The settlement at El Palenque consists of a 1.6 ha civic ceremonial plaza, a 28 ha core area of residential occupation, and an additional 43.5 ha with more dispersed evidence for residential occupation. There may be a number of factors influencing...
New Insights on Mobile Pastoralist's Household Ritual Activity: Early Observations from the Excavation of a Mongol period Ephemeral Dwelling in northern Mongolia. (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Empirical Approaches to Mobile Pastoralist Households" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Conversations on ritual practice along the Mongolian steppe are often dominated by discussions of monumental architecture that is typified by large stone mounds referred to as "khirigsuurs" or "Deer Stone" steles. Conversely, the idea that ritual space and practice can be considered at the small-scale household has been mostly...
A New Kingdom Domestic Environment at South Karnak: Preliminary Interpretation of Findings at the Mut Precinct and Their Relation to Other New Kingdom Domestic Sites (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In 2005 and from 2018 to 2020, the Johns Hopkins University Expedition at the Mut Precinct in Luxor (ancient Thebes), Egypt, unearthed New Kingdom domestic material, preliminarily dated to the first half of the Eighteenth Dynasty. The findings included a considerable number of articulated, mainly red painted, mud brick features in close proximity to two column...
A Non-elite Termination Ritual at the Classic Maya Capital of Tamarindito (2018)
In Classic Maya society, termination rituals were conducted to ‘kill’ buildings and artifacts, predominantly in elite contexts. The resulting deposits were rapidly deposited in intentionally damaged buildings. They contain dense artifact assemblages with exotic objects and refittable ceramic sherds. After burning them, the artifacts were covered with white marl. Here, we report the extensive excavation of non-elite Structure 5PS-12 at the outskirts of the Classic Maya capital of Tamarindito. Its...
Obsidian Tool Functions at Early Formative Altica, Mexico (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In central Mexican archaeology, tool functions have often been assumed for lithic artifacts based on material types and tool forms, which are classified broadly with labels such as bifaces, scrapers, blades, and flakes. Integrating the method of use-wear analysis derived through experimental archaeology is the most effective way to improve our understanding of...
Of Hearth and Home: Investigating Site Structure at the Fossil Creek Site, an Early Ceramic Camp in Larimer County, Colorado (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Fossil Creek (5LR13041) is a significant Early Ceramic (Plains Woodland) campsite in northern Colorado. Since 2010, archaeologists from Colorado State University and the University of Northern Colorado periodically conducted controlled surface collection, shovel testing, ground-based remote sensing, and block excavation (70 m2) of this large site. Artifacts...
Of Longhouses and Lineages: Evaluation of Transformations in Maritime Archaic Social Organization in the Far Northeast (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Kin, Clan, and House: Social Relatedness in the Archaeology of North American Societies" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The social organization of Maritime Archaic groups of Newfoundland and Labrador is notoriously difficult to assess due to poor preservational environments, challenging logistics of working in the Subarctic, and a paucity of research directly applicable to such questions; however, a long chronological...
On Making Kw’ets’tel and Interpreting the Remnants: An Archaeological and Experimental Archaeological Study of Stó:lō - Coast Salish Slate Fishing Knives (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Although critically important to the seasonal work of processing hundreds of thousands of fish for storage, kw’ets’tel, or Stó:lō-Coast Salish slate fish knives, are rarely recovered in the archaeological record. Knife-making debitage, however, is often recovered in great abundance during subsurface investigations in and near Stó:lō dwellings. Debitage...
Oneota Household Dynamics at the Koshkonong Creek Village (2017)
Despite a long history of research into the Late Prehistory of the Upper Great Lakes, insufficient attention has been paid to the nature of early Oneota households. Little is known about their size or composition, nor the nature or degree of interaction between and among them. Contemporaneous houses of different sizes and styles have been noted together at Oneota sites in the southeastern Wisconsin, further emphasizing the need for a greater understanding of Oneota household dynamics. This study...
Ongoing Household Research at Hun Tun: An Ancient Maya Hinterland Settlement in Northwestern Belize (2018)
The ancient Maya site, Hun Tun is a Late-Terminal Classic commoner settlement located in northwestern Belize. Research at Hun Tun operates under the Programme for Belize Archaeological Project (PfBAP). Social complexity at the household level serves as a research theme for Hun Tun investigations. This paper addresses the ancient Maya commoners who lived in household contexts at Hun Tun while discussing how their role as a hinterland community contributed to ideas of household identity, social...
Ongoing Research at Hun Tun and Medicinal Trail Community: The Ancient Maya Hinterland of Northwestern Belize (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Ancient Maya Landscapes in Northwestern Belize, Part I" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper discusses features and material culture from two hinterland settlements located in northwestern Belize, Hun Tun and the Medicinal Trail Community, east of the ancient Maya urban center of La Milpa. Residential groups include formal courtyards with "expensive" structures at one end of the continuum to numerous informal...
Panquilma: Socio-politics in Household Archaeology (2015)
An analysis and discussion contributing to previous research of the socio-political organization found at the Yschma site of Panquilma, located on the Lurin Valley, central Peruvian coast. Panquilma is a 13th–15th century site on the borders of one of the most important and influential religious centers in the Central Andean Coast – Pachacamac. The site of Panquilma is comprised of three sectors; Sector 1 is characterized as the public zone and includes monumental architecture in the form of...
Parenting in the Past: Investigations into the Spaces, Places, and Traces of Parenting in the Archaeological Record (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper seeks to bring together the existing literature and extend its theoretical and methodological implications for an archaeology of parenting, particularly in the times/places where contemporary written records do not exist. While parenting and childhood may be more readily visible to researchers and the public in periods where written records...
"People in this town had a hard life. We had a hard life": Creating and Re-Creating ‘Patchtown’ History in the Anthracite Region of Northeastern Pennsylvania (2015)
The modern Northeastern Pennsylvanian landscape is dotted with coal "patchtowns" – villages and towns where coal miners, textile mill operatives, and their families lived and adapted coping mechanisms to survive Northeastern Pennsylvania’s gilded age of industry. Today, the majority of these industries and, by extension, jobs, have relocated or disappeared altogether, while the patchtowns and their residents have remained. Public archaeology has opened the door to exploring how patchtown...
Persistence in the Nochixtlán Valley during the Classic to Postclassic Transition: Preliminary Notes from Etlatongo (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Checking the Pulse: Current Research in Oaxaca Part I" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. As in many other parts of Mesoamerica, the transition from the Classic to Postclassic periods in the Nochixtlán valley is a debated topic given the paucity of research in the Ñuu Savi area. Recently, archaeologists have aimed to elucidate the social transformations that took place during this liminal time by conducting excavations at...
Pit-House Complexes: A New Form of Rural Domestic Architecture in Hellenistic and Post-Hellenistic Central Asia (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Advances and New Perspectives in Central Asian Archaeology" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. To date studies of ancient Central Asian rural architecture are marked by an imbalance with much attention focused on the estates of elite landowners and less effective nods to non-elite pithouse structures. Recent excavations at Bashtepa in the Bukhara Oasis of Uzbekistan (2021) have revealed an intermediary form of domestic...