Formative (Other Keyword)
51-75 (172 Records)
The scale of pre-Columbian impact on Amazonia is one of the most debated topics in archaeology and paleoecology. To address this issue, an interdisciplinary approach combining archaeological soil profiles and lake sediment cores from the lower Tapajos are used to investigate climate-human-ecosystem interactions over the past 8,000 years. Pollen and phytolith data indicate the presence of polyculture crops including Ipomea, Manihot, Zea mays, and Cucurbita. The presence of Theobroma,...
Exchange, Crafting, and Subsistence at Early Formative Period La Consentida (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Early Formative (2000–1000 B.C.) period in Oaxaca is generally regarded as a transitional period from the Archaic (7000–2000 B.C.). The early formative is characterized by a change in subsistence, social organization, and sedentism. This period included the emergence of La Consentida, the earliest known settled village in coastal Oaxaca. This paper...
Exploring the Relationship between Surface and Subsurface Contexts in the Permian Basin, Southeastern New Mexico (2018)
Analysis of previous cultural resource management investigations conducted in the Permian Basin of southeastern New Mexico indicate that many data are of poor quality, unstandardized, and of limited utility for comparative purposes or regional planning. Part of the problem is the limited understanding of which methods are best suited for site recording and testing and, more specifically, how observations made at the site surface correspond to subsurface content. This poster presents an...
A Fabric-Impressed Potsherd from San Andrés, Tabasco, Mexico (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Despite over a century of intense research, little has been published on the non-durable technology of the Olmecs. This is due to the "tyranny" of preservation, which strongly biases the archaeological record in most areas toward durable artifacts. Recent analysis of a probably accidentally impressed potsherd from San Andrés, within the urban polity of La...
Feasting and Performativity at Late Formative Etlatongo (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Previous research on feasting in antiquity has demonstrated the importance of surface appearance and vessel form to interpret the performative aspects of rituals such as feasts. As part of the hosts’ strategies, of particular importance are vessels that invoke exotic imagery and/or outside groups through iconography and or aspects of overall vessel design....
Foodways and Human-Animal Relations at Early Formative Etlatongo: An Ontology of Differentiation (2019)
This is an abstract from the "The Archaeology of Oaxacan Cuisine" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The origins of Oaxacan cuisines can be found in the later half of the Early Formative period, a time of emerging socio-political complexity. The incorporation of maize as a dietary staple and less reliance on wild plants and animals were part of a profound change in subsistence practices and conceptions of food in much of Mesoamerica. We argue that...
Formative Ceramic and Obsidian Transitions at Salinas La Blanca (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Salinas La Blanca, located within the coastal estuary of the Soconusco region of Guatemala, was occupied from the Early to Middle Formative periods. This was a period of considerable cultural change, as Olmec influence on the Pacific Coast waned and regional centers developed more centralized power. This paper presents the results of a chemical compositional...
Formative Communities of Practice and Disjunctures in Southern Gulf Lowland Interaction with Central Mexico (2018)
Recently Stoner and Pool called for an "Archaeology of Disjuncture" to refocus attention on variation in intra- and interregional interaction, illustrating the approach with the case of the Classic period of the Tuxtla Mountains in southern Veracruz. In this paper I extend application of the disjunctive approach into the Formative Period of the southern Gulf lowlands, focusing primarily on interactions with Central Mexico, and incorporating a Communities of Practice perspective on the formation...
The Formative process as discourses of nature and culture: the case of Tarapacá, Atacama Desert (Northern Chile). (2015)
The purpose of this paper is to contribute to a critical review of the concept of Formative (ca. 2800-1000 AP) and its ontological and epistemological assumptions through our studies in Tarapacá, in the Atacama Desert (Chile). Through this case, our purpose is to complicate the notions or radical distinctions between nature and culture, farming and gathering, mobility and sedentism, among other categorizations upon which the Formative as Neolithic Revolution has been defined. The materiality...
Formative Urbanism in the Andean Lake Titicaca Basin (2016)
Archaeologists tend to apply the term ‘formative’ to phases of emergent complexity in a given world region. I critically engage the concept by honing in on what I term incipient urbanism as a core dimension of formative complexity. I draw on comparative data from across the Americas to situate formative complexity and incipient urbanism in the Andean Lake Titicaca basin. Archaeologists working in the region have known for years that by at least 800 BC, the region was home to multiple...
Fragments of Identity: A Comparative Study of Terminal Formative Figurines from Coastal Oaxaca, MX (2018)
The Terminal Formative period (150BCE-250CE) in Coastal Oaxaca, Mexico was a time of urbanization and increasing political interaction. The Terminal Formative included the emergence of an urban center at the site of Río Viejo, which may have extended political influence over surrounding communities. During this period, on the coast of Oaxaca, ceramic figurines were a ubiquitous medium for expression and identity in political/cultural exchanges. By comparing ceramic figurines from the site of Rio...
From Cattails to Maize: An Archaeobotanical Discussion on the Relationship between Human Groups and Plants during the Archaic and Formative Period (ca. 4000–2000 BP) in the Atacama Desert (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the Atacama Desert, northern Chile, human groups settled during the Archaic and Formative periods (ca. 4000–2000 BP) in the Tiliviche and Aragon sites, located between the coast and the hinterlands. We analyzed and identified the macrobotanical and microbotanical remains from the sites of Tiliviche-1 and Aragón-1 to evaluate the ontologies among the...
From Cooperation to Competition: An Architectural Energetics Analysis of Labor Organization for the Construction of Circle 2 at Los Guachimontones, Jalisco, Mexico (2018)
The Teuchitlán culture is one of many cultures in West Mexico during the Late Formative to Classic periods (300 B.C. – 450/500 AD) that share in the tradition of burying some of their dead in shaft and chamber tombs. The Teuchitlán culture is noteworthy among their contemporaries for the large number of circular ceremonial buildings concentrated around the Tequila volcano and surrounding valleys. Los Guachimontones, located on the southern side of the volcano, is the largest site in the region...
Funerary Architecture in Public Space: The Case of Burial 10 at Etlatongo, Mixteca Alta, Oaxaca (2018)
Mesoamerican architecture is characterized by its variety of forms, constructive techniques and functions through time. This can be seen in the Formative pre-urban settlement at Etlatongo, Mixteca Alta, Oaxaca, which was occupied from the Early Formative to the Postclassic period, where among the architectural configurations, we can find structures associated to different human activities. From all burials founded in public spaces at Etlatongo, we observed that no burial has funerary...
Gardens, Infields and Outfields: Cultivation Intensity, Neotropical Landscapes and the Evolution of Early Agricultural Systems (2018)
Plant cultivation in and around residential locations and at greater distances from settlements are options early cultivators employed, supplemented by wild resources, to meet subsistence needs. The mix of plants, soils and cultivation practices varied by environment, distribution of resources, population density and other factors. This paper examines the role of gardens over the long transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture in tropical lowland environments. Ethnographic data,...
The Genetic History and Diffusion Routes of Early Maize in North America (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Frontiers of Plant Domestication" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeological and genetic evidence from modern and ancient maize (Zea mays) samples indicate that maize initially reached the southwestern United States (U.S.) by around 4,000 years ago via a highland Mexican route, followed by a second introduction via the Pacific coast, around 2,000 years ago. However, maize diffusion routes northward from the...
Hand modeled Preclassic figurines and early expression of concepts of replication (2017)
This paper concentrates on the vast corpus of hand modeled ceramic figurines from Preclassic Pacific slope of Mesoamerica, in particular those from Middle Preclassic La Blanca, Guatemala. We argue that, within this collection of figurines and related ones from elsewhere in Middle Preclassic Mesoamerica, one can find evidence for the concept of replication – or an emphasis on a recurring "type" or "character" – that pre-dates the invention of the mold. Although Preclassic figurine assemblages are...
Hawaiian Petroglyphs and Pictographs: Patterns and Interpretations from Hawai’i, Maui, Moloka’i, O’ahu, and Kaua’i (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Interdisciplinary Approaches to Rock Art Documentation, Research, and Analysis" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Hawaiian Islands have a variety of rock art sites I have examined and photographed on five of the eight main islands over the past 50 years, with most of the research conducted more recently as summarized in this presentation. Some islands have only a few petroglyph locations, whereas the Big Island...
A History of Knowledge of the Amazonian Dark Earths (2018)
The anthropogenic origin of the Amazonian dark earths (Terra Pretas) has been a methodologically assured fact for 70 years. Especially during the last 30 years, Terra Preta have been scientifically investigated with increasing intensity and in an ever-widening context. Currently, the dominant concept guiding research is the idea of binding atmospheric carbon which artificially produced dark earths. The large-scale production of terra preta is said to be an efficient instrument to combat global...
How did the end of the Cupisnique-Chavín Religious Complex affect local leadership? (2016)
In this paper I assess the impact of the end of the Cupisnique-Chavín Religious Complex (CCRC) in local leadership. Using the case of the Nepeña Middle Valley, I evaluate how authority was built during the Late Formative and how the disintegration of the CCRC around 500 B.C. had profound impacts in the way power was constituted and negotiated during the next centuries.
Identifying the Archaeological Signatures of Inequality: An Analysis of Inequality at Late Formative La Joya and Bezuapan (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This poster presents an analysis of artifact assemblage data from La Joya and Bezuapan, two late Formative Period (ca. 400 BC-AD 100) sites in southern Veracruz, Mexico. The study focuses on the ways in which wealth inequality is manifested in the archaeological record; wealth is defined here as the total of desirable factors consisting of two main categories...
The Impact of Diet and Dental Health among the Mixtec Urban Societies from the Formative Period of Oaxaca, Mexico (2019)
This is an abstract from the "The Archaeology of Oaxacan Cuisine" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. We present the results of a preliminary study that investigates the impact of increased social complexity on the dental health of two Mixteca Alta populations, one from the Middle Formative (850 – 400 BC.) component of the site of Etlatongo and the other from the Late to Terminal Formative (400 BC. – AD. 300) urban center of Cerro Jazmín. Our research...
Importation, Distribution, and Crafting of Obsidian at Formative Etlatongo (2018)
The nature of the utilization of obsidian throughout Mesoamerica has long been a focus of study and topic of debate for many anthropologists. The history of lithic analysis has produced many assumptions and interpretations regarding exchange, use and control of this extremely important material. Obsidian itself, as an imported resource, might have had otherworldly properties that held a special place in the cosmological construction of the world for villagers in the Valley of Oaxaca. The power...
Indigenous Archaeological Involvement in Front of Suppression Reduces Mitigation (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. During early suppression efforts of two wildland fires, indigenous firefighters reduced damage by sharing unrecorded cultural site polygons created from oral tradition aligned to dozer lines ahead of the fire’s predictive path. During the Detwiler Fire (2017), and the Ferguson Fire (2018), the Tribal Archaeologists from two tribes, and the Cultural Officers...
Infancy and Breastfeeding at Cerro Jazmín: Isotopic Data from a Late-Terminal Formative Population in the Mixteca Alta, Oaxaca (2018)
We present isotopic results from 25 adults and children from Cerro Jazmín. Bone collagen (n= 17) and bone and enamel apatite (n=21) isotopic data provide C, N, and O values describing diet and breastfeeding patterns. Carbon values suggest a narrow diet heavily based on maize and little animal protein. Individuals between 0-3 years of age had significantly higher nitrogen and oxygen values than adults, suggesting that these infants may have still been breastfeeding at the time of death. Weaning...