Communities of Practice (Other Keyword)

126-150 (160 Records)

A Provenance and Stylistic Study of Formative Caddo Vessels: Evidence for Specialized Ritual Craft Production and Long-Distance Exchange (2018)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Shawn Lambert.

Instrumental Neutron Activation Analysis is used to determine whether Formative Caddo finewares (A.D. 850 -1150) were made locally in the Arkansas River Basin or produced by their Gulf Coastal Plain neighbors to the south. The preliminary INAA results, in concert with a stylistic study that indicates very few potters had the knowledge and skill to produce them, show that Formative Caddo finewares were made in the southern Caddo region and exported north to Arkansas River Basin mound centers for...


The Ralph Solecki Collection: Revisiting Forgotten Materials in an Urban New York Landscape (2024)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Delancey Griffin. Emily Pihlaja. Jared Barlament.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ralph Solecki, made famous for his work arguing for the “humanity” of the Neanderthals of Shanidar Cave, contributed invaluably in his early career to Northeastern American archaeology by excavating sites in the New York metropolitan area which would soon become inaccessible due to urban expansion. First collected in the 1930s, the materials in the...


Ramey on the Frontier: A Pilot Study of Select Ramey Incised Technology from Cahokia’s Southern Neighbors (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Anthony Farace.

This is an abstract from the "Step by Step: Tracing World Potting Traditions through Ceramic Petrography" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Cahokia’s influence on the archaeological cultures of the upper Central Mississippi River Valley (CMRV) has often been described as less prominent than processes taking place in the northern hinterlands. Although few examples are found at each site, Ramey Incised jars are found in many early and middle...


Reconciling with the Past and Present: Efforts at Colorado Federal Indian Schools (2024)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Holly Norton. Heather Shotten.

This is an abstract from the "Collaborative and Community Archaeology" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Between 1880 and 1920, Colorado hosted nine institutions that focused on the assimilation of Native youth, including day schools, on-reservation boarding schools, and off-reservation boarding schools. One institution in particular, Fort Lewis Indian Boarding School, became a state college with the intent to serve the Native population. Today Fort...


Reconstructing the Chaîne Opératoire of Inka and Local Pottery from Pachcamac, Peru Using Compositional Analyses and X-Radiography (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only James Davenport. Marie-Claude Boileau.

This is an abstract from the "Alfareros deste Inga: Pottery Production, Distribution and Exchange in the Tawantinsuyu" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the Inka Empire (Tawantinsuyu), Inka polychrome pottery was used for state-sponsored purposes. This pottery was not produced solely in the imperial core and distributed to provincial contexts, but rather was produced by a diverse range of potters recruited from subject populations across the...


Regional Variation Among Ancestral Pueblo Water Jars: A Geometric Morphometric Approach (2021)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Kathleen Barvick.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Pottery in the US Southwest has long been studied for the insights it provides into social identity. Differences in construction may suggest differences in conceptions of the correct way to make a ceramic vessel; when studied through the lens of practice theory, variation in form speaks to alternate communities of practice and may show boundaries in...


Residential Trajectories of Commoner, Elite, and Noble Spaces at Actuncan, Belize (2018)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Kara Fulton. David Mixter. Borislava Simova.

This paper summarizes the archaeological investigations of ten residential units at Actuncan that likely represented three distinct social strata: commoner, elite, and noble. We explore the trajectories of these residences from the Preclassic to the Terminal Classic period. Data suggest that although political authority in the Mopan River valley shifted throughout Actuncan’s long occupation, many commoner residences maintained local identities and residential continuity through time. However,...


Results of the Multiyear Study of the Ancient Maya Lithic Production Community of the Took’ Witz Group at El Palmar, Campeche, Mexico (2024)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Kelsey Sullivan. Kenichiro Tsukamoto.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper presents the results of a multiyear research project at the lithic production community of Took’ Witz, a hinterland group located near the ancient Maya city of El Palmar (Campeche, Mexico). Our research explored the large-scale utilitarian lithic production that occurred at the site, as well as the activities and material cultures at three...


A Review of the Archaeological Evidence for Smoking across the Americas and Africa (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Mario Zimmermann. Shannon Tushingham.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. At present, smoking is considered one of the largest threats to public health globally. Nonetheless, the inhalation of psychoactive substances after deliberate combustion has deep historical roots. Moreover, current models hold that smoking was invented independently in the Americas and Africa. This paper reviews the archaeological evidence available for...


Ruminations on Puebloan Ethnic Diversity and Ceramic Specialization in the Ancient Western San Juan (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Winston Hurst.

This is an abstract from the "Transcending Modern Boundaries: Recent Investigations of Cultural Landscapes in Southeastern Utah" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Though traditionally perceived as representing two distinct Puebloan subcultures, San Juan Red Ware and Tsegi Orange Ware are best understood as representing a single ceramic tradition whose production geography shifted several times between the eighth and fourteenth centuries,...


Sight Formation Processes: Archaeology of Cultural and Sociohistorical Extromission and “Seeing Together” (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Zach Chase.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Despite insights from recent archaeologies of the senses, notions persist in the human and social sciences of vision as the invariant individual’s passive reception of a phenomenally “given” world, while cognitivists posit a universal “visual grammar.” In contrast, this paper asks how archaeology might draw on and contribute to the understanding that...


Similarities and Differences Between Upper Gila and Mimbres Valley Ceramics in Southwestern New Mexico (2018)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Patricia Gilman. Jakob Sedig.

Although both the Mimbres and the Gila valleys are within the Mimbres region and are not far apart, they seem to have rather major differences in the numbers of rooms per room block, the numbers of room blocks per site, and the designs painted on Mimbres black-on-white pottery. In this poster, we report similarities and differences between Mimbres Valley (MV) and upper Gila/western Mimbres (UGWM) pottery designs. We start by defining and quantifying style elements seemingly more common in the...


The social implications of elk hunting for ancestral Coast Salish communities (2017)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Paul Ewonus.

Field, laboratory and archival archaeological research has helped to reconstruct important parts of the ancestral seasonal landscape in the southern Strait of Georgia. Contextual understanding of place provides a baseline for questions of sociality during the last c. 5000 years prior to the colonial era. Evidence illustrates several of the historical processes through which community identities were brought into focus in the Coast Salish world. As an example, I explore what is known about one of...


Something About Kutau-Bao: Understanding Dominant Obsidian Sources (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Robin Torrence.

This is an abstract from the "2019 Fryxell Award Symposium: Papers in Honor of M. Steven Shackley" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. After c. 50 years of research using a diverse range of geochemical techniques, patterns of movement for obsidian in the Pacific region, dating from the Pleistocene up to the historic period, have been documented comprehensively. Although there are eight high quality obsidian sources, by far the largest quantity of...


Sound Practices in Late Postclassic to Early Colonial Tlaxcallan: Applying a Community of Practice Framework to Investigate Sonic Expression (2021)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Katrina Kosyk.

This is an abstract from the "Music Archaeology's Paradox: Contextual Dependency and Contextual Expressivity" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In archaeological interpretations of Postclassic period central Mexico, sound practices and related assemblages are often conceptualized as unchanging, standardized, and fixed to a common Mesoamerican religious system under the umbrella of Aztec cultural expression. This neglect of other polities’ sound...


Sourcing Pensacola Communities of Practice: NAA of Mississippian Pottery on the Northern Gulf of Mexico Coast (2024)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Erin Nelson. Lindsay Bloch. Neill Wallis. Ashley Rutkoski.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Pensacola variant of the northern Gulf of Mexico Coast was well connected to interior Mississippian groups, yet Pensacola lifeways do not fit broader patterns of subsistence, settlement, and political organization commonly thought of as hallmarks of Mississippian societies. Throughout the Pensacola culture area, people created hybrid cultures by...


Sourcing Surface Treatments on Whiteware Ceramics from Southeast Utah Great House Communities (2024)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Kaitlyn Davis. Jeffrey Ferguson. Laure Dussubieux.

This is an abstract from the "Twenty Years of Archaeological Science at the Field Museum’s Elemental Analysis Facility" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Previous elemental research on ceramics from Chacoan Great Houses in southeast Utah produced unexpected results. Whereas painted whiteware serving bowls are traditionally thought more likely to be traded or procured from further away than grayware cooking pots, neutron activation analysis (NAA) of...


The Struggle Within: Effects of Spanish Interaction Intensity on Pueblo Pottery Technology as Revealed through Petrographic Study (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Kari Schleher. Suzanne Eckert.

This is an abstract from the "Step by Step: Tracing World Potting Traditions through Ceramic Petrography" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Spanish intrusion, colonization, and missionization impacted many aspects of life for the Pueblo people. Examination of ceramic technology provides a way to recognize cultural continuity and transformation in Pueblo communities as well as highlighting the role of Indigenous agency in determining the structure of...


Technological Knowledge, Migrations and Ancestral Puebloan Communities of Practice in The Northern Rio Grande of New Mexico (2018)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Mark Agostini.

In the mid-late Classic period (AD 1250 - 1400), Ancestral Pueblo people living on the Pajarito Plateau of New Mexico experienced cultural change due to difficulties in farming during periods of drought. As a result, communities abandoned pre-contact plateau villages to join their Tewa-speaking relatives at the earliest historic period Rio Grande settlements. Oral histories from descendant communities from the 19th and early 20th centuries recount how the remaining members of these communities...


Technologies of Clay: Pottery, Architecture, and the Transformation of Mud in the Atacama Desert (South-Central Andes) (2018)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Estefanía Vidal-Montero. Itací Correa. Liz Vilches. Francisco Gallardo. Mauricio Uribe.

In the Atacama Desert, pottery is one of the main technological changes of the Formative Period (ca. 2700 BP). The initial industry (LCA type) is characterized by a stylistic homogeneity coupled with a wide geographical distribution. Compositional analyses, however, have shown a significant regularity in pastes, suggesting the use of localized sources of raw materials and/or specific production centers—indicative of a well-defined recipe and style. Provenance studies have identified a locus of...


The Timespace of the Pre-Hispanic City of Cerro de Oro (2018)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Francesca Fernandini.

This work uses the concept of timespace (Schatzki 2010) to follow the construction and habitation of the prehispanic city of Cerro de Oro within the lower Cañete valley between ca. 500-900 AD. The concept of timespace assumes that the temporality and spatiality of the social are considered as intertwined elements that form the dynamic infrastructure where social phenomena such as power, social organization or coordinated action are constituted. ...


To Spin and Whorl: Functional and Symbolic Associations of Chancay Weaving Tools (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Jeffrey Splitstoser. Gabrielle Vail.

This is an abstract from the "Textile Tools and Technologies as Evidence for the Fiber Arts in Precolumbian Societies" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeological sources suggest that textiles from Chancay culture (ca. 1000-1470), occupying the central coastal region of Peru, were produced in large quantities. While they are ubiquitous in collections all over the world, they remain to be systematically studied, as do the tools that were used to...


Tracing Relationships over Time: Models of Exchange in the Greater Ica Region during the Paracas-Nasca Transition (2021)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Ann Peters.

This is an abstract from the "Developments through Time on the South Coast of Peru: In Memory of Patrick Carmichael" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Research on the "Paracas Necropolis" textile assemblage from the Necropolis of Wari Kayan and comparisons with contemporary artifacts has led to the development of models of artifact production and uses (*chaîne opératoire), with evident implications for models of the social relations of production....


Tracking Population Movement and Interaction in Southern Appalachia: Elemental Analysis of Early Mississippian Pottery from Etowah (2024)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Matthew LoBiondo. Emily Kracht.

This is an abstract from the "Twenty Years of Archaeological Science at the Field Museum’s Elemental Analysis Facility" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Migration, pilgrimage, and other forms of movement and culture contact have long been recognized as important forces of social change. Social interaction among culturally diverse groups has been demonstrated archaeologically as an important causal factor in Mississippian origins throughout the US...


Two Thousand Years of Pot-Making: Exploring Neolithic Ceramic Traditions in SW Calabria, Italy (2018)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Kostalena Michelaki. John Robb.

This poster will examine the degree to which the task of pot-making changed from the Early/Middle (ca. 5700-5000 BCE) to the Late Neolithic (ca. 5000-4000 BCE) periods in SW Calabria, Italy. We will present the manufacturing sequences of all Neolithic wares, based on the results of more than a decade of stylistic, mineralogical, and physico-chemical analyses of ceramics from the sites of Umbro Neolithic and Penitenzeria, as well as the results of laboratory and replicative experiments using...