Communities of Practice (Other Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Randee Fladeboe.

Macaws were imported into the pre-Hispanic American Southwest from central Mexico for hundreds of years; it is generally projected that the purpose of this practice was to supply feathers for ritual purposes. Recent zooarchaeological research has demonstrated that the wing feathers of Southwestern turkeys were regularly plucked, as evidenced by significant scarring on the birds’ ulnae. The author observed the presence of this scarring on the wing elements of archaeological macaw specimens from...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Briece Edwards. Greg Archuleta. Chris Rempel. Cheryl Pouley.

This is an abstract from the "Future Directions for Archaeology and Heritage Research in the Willamette Valley, Oregon" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Tribal Cultural Landscapes are intimate and comprehensive understandings of place rooted in the ecologies, histories, and practices of those communities who create them. For the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde (CTGR), these include all lands between the Cascade and Coast Mountain Ranges of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marijo Gauthier-Bérubé.

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Sal, Bacalhau e Açúcar : Trade, Mobility, Circular Navigation and Foodways in the Atlantic World", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Beyond the distribution of goods and the mobility of individuals, trading networks also involve the dissemination of knowledge and ideas, both through passive and active processes. Because ships were central to these networks, shipwrights participated in this intellectual...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jillian Jordan.

Archaeological approaches to ancient Maya communities often assume that spatially distinct architectural groups are tantamount to social groups, but proximity is likely not the only salient organizing principle. Members of prehistoric communities, like modern ones, defined the community in which they belong based on who they choose to interact with, which often lies at the intersection of kin, status, gender, ethic, economic, and spatial affiliations. Employing a communities of practice...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jay Franklin. Lauren Franklin. Brian McKee. Andrew Lack. Mitchell Keur.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. We summarize research findings from a data recovery project conducted along US Highway 60 near Superior, Arizona for the Arizona Department of Transportation. Prehistoric sites here range from small habitation sites (farmsteads and/or hamlets) of the late Preclassic – early Classic (AD 1000 - 1160) to both small and large habitation sites of the late...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jay Haviser.

Incipient aspects of syncretic processes among Africans and Europeans had begun on the African continent from the fifteenth century, with a particular reference noted for religious practices. Considering the relatively isolated participation of the two groups within the early interactive sphere of West Africa, as well as the in-situ contexts of the African cultures, some syncretical expressions were evident, yet due to the disproportional ratio of populations, were more subtle on the continent....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Charles R. Cobb. Gifford Waters.

Lithic data have received sparse attention in research on the Franciscan missions of Spanish La Florida. A re-analysis of the collections from three seventeenth-century interior missions reveals that Native Americans continued to rely on a diverse lithic technological tradition well after arrival of friars in their communities and the subsequent importation of metal tools. This pattern is also reflected in historical accounts where, for example, Native Americans were mandated to maintain quotas...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Callum Abbott.

Both archaeologists and the knappers who created the lithics we recover are skilled practitioners implicated in a genealogy of technological practice. These living, thinking, and feeling beings make tools with their hearts and their minds–two inseparable components of the complete corporeal experience. A heart-centered approach to lithic analysis offers insights about the social and emotional contexts of situated learning in which ancient and contemporary makers of stone tools engage. The...

DOCUMENT Citation Only James Davenport.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Pacajes pottery is commonly found throughout Qullasuyu, the southern quarter of the Inka empire. Originating in Bolivia, it saw wider distribution after Inka expansion through the region. One specific form common of this style is a shallow plate decorated with small, black stylized llamas repeating at regular intervals over a red interior. Evidence for the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kyle Freund. Robert Tykot. Andrea Vianello.

This study focuses on the long-term exploitation of obsidian in prehistoric Sicily and the factors that influenced the procurement and consumption of these raw materials from the sixth to second millennia B.C. A detailed study of 6,287 prehistoric artifacts from 43 sites shows that the vast majority of obsidian found in Sicily comes from a single Lipari subsource, with smaller quantities of Pantelleria obsidian found in the west. Despite differences in the color and physical properties of these...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Katie Richards.

Unlike other regions of the American Southwest, many basic aspects of Fremont ceramic production have never been adequately explored, and many of the assumptions about the production process presented in the literature have never been rigorously tested. Low-technology analysis techniques such as re-firing can provide a simple and cost-effective way to begin exploring these processes and test assumptions made by past archaeologists. Re-firing Fremont ceramics has provided new information about...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Benjamin Carter.

Shell beads are rarely considered a major artifact category. However, research on bead production among the Manteño-Guancavilca (AD 800-1532) of coastal Ecuador highlights the fundamental importance of this category of artifacts. By recording six measurements and four qualitative observations for each of 7651 beads from six sites (two regions, three stretches of time), this research has been able to recognize two distinct châines opératoires. At approximately AD 1200, bead makers shifted from a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Genevieve Woodhead.

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. This study addresses both the geochemical composition and the decorative content of ceramic sherds recovered from the Box B Site (LA 16660), New Mexico. Thorough and successful ceramic analyses by Barbara Mills, Hayward Franklin, and Elizabeth Garrett took place in the 1980s. This current project reexamines white...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Timothy Knab.

This is an abstract from the "Bringing the Past to Life, Part 2: Papers in Honor of John M. D. Pohl" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. We use metaphors for the human mind just as we do for religious, mythic and symbolic systems. These metaphoric systems reproduce the same social phenomena in ritual process and social organization. It should thus be clear that we find reintegration of social, symbolic, and metaphoric systems as a society is...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Blaine Burgess. Jeffrey Ferguson. Suzanne Eckert.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Micaceous utility wares are commonly found at Ancestral Pueblo villages along the Rio Grande and adjacent areas, yet they have received comparatively little attention relative to the contemporary well-studied glaze wares. Compositional studies show that glaze ware vessels and their ingredients were often transported across the landscape, driven by a mix of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Steven Rospopo. Linda Wheelbarger. Nicholas Jew.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Some Southwest researchers consider the Middle San Juan area insignificant when compared to the Cibola-Chaco traditional homelands to the south and the Mesa Verde traditional homelands to the North. On the contrary, ongoing research suggests a web of dynamic interregional and intraregional networks existed in the Middle San Juan from AD 750 to regional...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rachel Briggs.

By A.D. 1120 in the Black Warrior Valley of west-central Alabama, a Mississippian identity, predicated on the dissemination and subsequent adoption of maize, had firmly begun to take root at what would become the ritual-ceremonial center of Moundville. Traditionally, researchers have modelled the origins of Moundville within a political-economic lens: the growing aspirations of elites, who are implied to be male, are supported and fueled by stores of and feasts of maize, which is treated...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marco Serino. Eleni Hasaki.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Movements of artists and artisans was a common phenomenon in Eastern Mediterranean both in prehistoric and historical times, with sculptors and wall painters being the most frequently mentioned in ancient texts. The mobility of makers of figured ceramics in Classical Athens and in Southern Italy has often been posited based on stylistic affinities, but not...

DOCUMENT Citation Only C. Trevor Duke. Neill Wallis.

This is an abstract from the "Ceramic Petrographers in the Americas: Recent Research and Methodological Advances" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Technological innovations can have profound social consequences. Alterations to a given potting network change the pacing and tempo of interactions between experts and apprentices, effectively restructuring intergenerational relationships within a community. For this reason, experienced potters may...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Eric Kansa. Sarah Whitcher Kansa. Joshua Wells. Kelsey Noack Meyers. Stephen Yerka.

This is an abstract from the "*SE Big Data and Bigger Questions: Papers in Honor of David G. Anderson" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeologists generate vast amounts of data in the form of databases, media files, spreadsheets, GIS files, reports, articles, and other literature. However, despite years of advocacy and data management investments, archaeological information is still poorly curated, scattered, incompatible, and haphazardly...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Vanessa Hanvey.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper will explore the usefulness of morphometric analysis when investigating how communities of stone toolmakers are embedded in and help construct their social landscape. Utilizing the concept of communities of practice, I intend to examine the culturally and historically situated nature of stone toolmakers through the analysis of their products....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Katherine Dungan.

This is an abstract from the "Why Platform Mounds? Part 2: Regional Comparisons and Tribal Histories" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Both platform mounds and Roosevelt Red Ware (or Salado Polychrome) pottery have been interpreted as tied to religious practice in the late prehispanic southern Southwest, although the relationship between the two traditions is still debated. In the mid-14th-century (Gila phase) Tonto Basin, settlement included not...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jerrod Seifert. Ashley Lingle. Attila Gyucha. Paul Duffy. Danielle Riebe.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Too often the conservation, visualization, and management of archaeological sites are afterthoughts of excavations. Heritage preservation and presentation are only considered after the trowels leave, with site managers working within the confines of what they’ve been given and the public viewing what is left . Excavation decisions – whether knowingly or...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anna Browne Ribeiro.

In contemporary Gurupá, a rural municipality in the Brazilian Amazon, life is largely shaped by movement of, and among, plants. Plants here are mobile, but spend most of their lives stationary. In this paper, I examine the relationship between people and plants – as living, but nonetheless spatially rooted elements of the landscape – in these agroextractivist communities. I explore the significance of planting and plant life in regulating territorial use and notions of rights, access, and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tracie Mayfield.

This is an abstract from the "Building Bridges: Papers in Honor of Teresita Majewski" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The islands of Old Providence and Santa Catalina, located 130 miles of the coast of Nicaragua and around 8.5 square miles in size, have been a center of global trade, resource extraction, and military action since 1629, when the English Puritan venture capitalists of the Providence Island Company—whose shareholders also held stakes...