Materiality (Other Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mariah Wade.

This is an abstract from the "The Iron Age of Northwest Portugal: Leftovers of Behavior" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Blowing into molten glass gave it form, a breathtaking invention of the first century BCE. Before that, glass vessels were made by using the core-forming technique and by casting, which were more expensive and less efficient methods. Glass blowing enabled the play of forms and color while making glass vessels more accessible to a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrew Bauer.

This paper examines the history of medieval (circa 500-1600 CE) agricultural infrastructure—assemblages of soils, irrigation wells, and processing facilities—in the semi-arid conditions of the Raichur Doab, Southern India. Despite some investiture from ruling elites and temples, the material evidence for agro-infrastructural development suggests that it was not merely a project of state or institutional design. Rather, its development might more productively be characterized as a process of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Todd VanPool. Christine VanPool. Brandon Massullo.

This is an abstract from the "Magic, Spirits, Shamanism, and Trance" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Human cognition both enables and limits the ways humans can interact with spirits and forces that are typically unseen or that otherwise transcend the physical world. Research in psychology, anthropology, and related fields indicates that social and physical contexts are central to activating the cognitive frameworks that facilitate spirit-human...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Guido Pezzarossi.

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Gateways to Future Historical Archaeology in Mexico and Central America", at the 2024 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. As noted the uncertain position of historical archaeology in Mesoamerica, particularly in Guatemala, has reified the divide between prehispanic and later colonial native histories in the region. At the same time, the archaeology of the recent/contemporary is especially neglected, obfuscating how...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Clifford J Pereira. Caesar Bita.

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Globalisation of Sino-foreign Maritime Exchange: Ocean Cultures", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. The Chinese navigator Admiral Zheng He led seven epic voyages into the Indian Ocean, reaching the shores of North-Eastern Africa. Chinese historical documentation records his visit to Malindi on the Kenyan coast in 1417-19. Since 2000 there have been several spectacular announcements in Kenya and China that have...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ryan Peterson.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. North America’s Native Copper Industry is one of the oldest metalworking traditions in the world, with metal use in this region dating to over 9,500 years ago. While several studies have focused on copper mining and use, few have focused on copper production. As a result, little attention has been given to the waste materials generated during the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Emily Ditto.

At Chaco Canyon, clear indications of social differentiation in the Pueblo world first appeared during the 9th-11th centuries. One materialization of this is the contrast between two contemporaneous architectural forms: great houses, interpreted as populous communities or largely empty centers of seasonal ritual pilgrimage, and small houses, explained as multi-family households. Since ritual artifacts have been excavated from both house categories, analyzing inter- and intra-site variation in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rocío López Cabral.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper presents new data intended to review and re-think the human environment interaction and social processes of mound complexes in the highlands of East of Uruguay. A combination of Practice questions revolving around the effects of practices have in the people themselves and in the landscape with a methodologically geoarchaeological approach is an...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kong Cheong. Linda Howie. Terry Powis.

The Classic Maya crafted a wide variety of music instruments from clay and other materials. Numerous depictions of musicians on vase paintings and murals attest to the important role of music in ceremonial occasions. Music instruments were also interred with the deceased during funerary ceremonies; although their comparative rarity in burials suggests that their inclusion was not a common practice. At the site of Pacbitun, music instruments have been recovered from multiple Classic period...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Goran Djurdjevich.

This is an abstract from the "And They Look into the Mirror for Answers: Mirror Analysis to Understand Its Holder" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Roman Empire and Qin-Han China were two of the most significant and powerful states and empires in antiquity. Building upon recent research findings, and drawing inspiration from the numerous archaeological discoveries of mirrors in the both empires, this proposed paper aims to demonstrate how...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Carla Hernández Garavito.

This is an abstract from the "Indigenous Stories of the Inka Empire: Local Experiences of Ancient Imperialism" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The results from archaeological excavations on a residential settlement and a ritual-public center in Huarochirí suggest minimal use of Inka-style material culture in most everyday life contexts. At the same time, architectural intervention suggests a significant transformation on both sites’ layouts....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Luisa Diaz Arriola.

This is an abstract from the "Political Economies on the Andean Coast" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. El registro arqueológico de la costa central peruana durante los períodos tardíos (900-1532 dC) da cuenta de la presencia de conchas y semillas exóticas, y piedras semi preciosas provenientes de la costa nor peruana y del Ecuador. Su presencia se explica a través de dos posibles rutas: la terrestre y la marítima. La etnohistoria grafica que en el...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jasmine Vieri. Enrico Crema. Agnese Benzonelli. Juanita Sáenz Samper. Marcos Martinón-Torres.

This is an abstract from the "Materials in Movement in the Isthmo-Colombian Area" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Muisca of the Eastern Cordillera of Colombia are known for making extensive use of imported gold to manufacture both votive metalwork and body ornamentation over a millennium. To better understand the materiality of this imported raw material, we present new computational models of the compositional datasets pertaining to Muisca...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Roberto Rosado-Ramirez. Arthur Joyce.

This is an abstract from the "The Vibrancy of Ruins: Ruination Studies in Ancient Mesoamerica" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper introduces the session by discussing recent ideas advanced by ruination studies and the material turn, as well as the role of ruins in Mesoamerican communities. Combining concepts from ruination studies and the “New Materialist” perspective helps us to understand ancient communities as formed by assemblages of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Bradford M. Jones.

Even as archaeologists continue improving the identification of Spanish colonial sites in Texas, consideration of the archaeological implications of the mix of regional and social identities that made up the settlers sent to populate these sites remains limited. Consequently, most research focuses on the presumed cultural provenance of artifact manufacture – European/Mexican/Chinese/Indigenous - to interpret colonial period sites and the material aspects of emerging frontier identities. While...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Meghan Buchanan. Elizabeth Watts Malouchos. Meghan Buchanan.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Carbonized shell temper has traditionally been seen as one of the defining hallmarks of Mississippian Period societies in the Midwestern and Southeastern US. The Lower Mississippi River Alluvial Survey (Phillips, Ford, and Griffin 1951) solidified the importance of shell temper in distinguishing Mississippian Period sites and occupation levels from earlier...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brianne E Charles. Eric Burant. Patricia B. Richards.

Of the over 2000 individuals recovered from the Milwaukee County Poor Farm Cemetery (MCPFC), approximately one-third are juveniles under the age of 20. Age categories for the MCIG juveniles were established using a variety of dental, osteometric and nonosteometric methods. The example of juvenile lot 10007, (dental age assessment 5 postnatal months, osteometric age 39 fetal weeks) recovered with diaper fabric, safety pins, and a small angel pin, suggests that a more refined look at juvenile age...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jonathan Goldner.

This is an abstract from the "Archaeoacoustics: Sound, Hearing, and Experience in Archaeology" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper in cognitive archaeology studies how skilled agents use eco-acoustical features of the environment as mnemonic device. Beginning with the question, What do trees know about canoes?, I excavate how ways of knowing can be deeply sedimented in nature by drawing on the ethnography of Algonquin rock art and fieldwork...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stacy F. Markel.

This is a poster submission presented at the 2022 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Archaeologists are moving away from just classifying objects in dryly scientific ways that obscure meanings and the past people who used them. We are attempting to view items through the lenses of their users. As we study Native American material culture, this means understanding the agency that inheres in artifacts. Great Lakes Anishinaabeg understood that objects both constrain and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Scott Nicolay. Miranda Fengel.

This is an abstract from the "Defining Perishables: The How, What, and Why of Perishables and Their Importance in Understanding the Past" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In “Entangled,” his landmark theoretical work on the relationship between human beings and material culture, Ian Hodder emphasized the importance of understanding how things endure differently than people. Thus longer-lived objects can bridge gaps and carry meaning between multiple...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Meghan Dudley.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. <html> Willey and Phillips (1958:2) famously once said that “American archaeology is anthropology or it is nothing” – and in the 21^st century, we got the memo. As archaeologists increasingly embrace a community-engaged archaeology like our cultural anthropological colleagues, many of us are considering ways our collaboratively created work can...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Meredith Chesson. Annmarie Lindzy.

Archaeologists have described and discussed households for decades, yet only recently have them made the theoretical leap from residential structures and coresidential units to peoples’ homes. Homes are built, embodied and enlivened by peoples’ actions, thoughts, relationships, experiences and aspirations. This poster presents the results of an ethnoarchaeoogical analysis of homemaking on the islands of Inishbofin and Inishark (co. Galway) as well as Inishturk (co. Mayo) in western Ireland....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Patricia G. Markert.

  In many ways, Castroville, Texas is a world unto itself. As the "Little Alsace" of Texas, it has been built for over a century through work, struggle, and cooperation – with words and materials, memories and relationships. This world is continuously crafted today, through the restoration of historic Alsatian-style houses and the stories that are told about the town and its history. Though Castroville has been a nexus of Alsatian identity in Texas, other Alsatian colonies spread further into...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lynn Dodd. Sabina Zonno. Lauren Malkoun.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Cultural repositories struggle with competing missions of wide access and preservation. To release this tension, we created the Virtual Reality Global Library (VRGL), a shareable, immersive VR headset experience that provokes presence through real-time virtual reading of ancient manuscripts with parchment simulation. Informed by experts and experimental...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Charles Cheek.

Dress is an object made up of other objects. I combine a practice approach with the chaîne opératoire and behavior chains methods to analyze technical and social acts involving dress objects. The analysis starts with one segment of the actions involving dress—the actual act of dressing. The study includes only court scenes that appear to memorialize historic events, although some of the observations and conclusions can be applied to other kinds of scenes and other media. After identifying the...