Formative (Other Keyword)
101-125 (215 Records)
The difficulty that many economists and anthropologists have with studying ancient money lies with inadequate understanding of modern monetary systems. I briefly review the establishment of two currencies: the British pound in the 18th century and the US dollar in the 19th and why the establishment both currencies were political (not economic) constructs. Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) economists analyze the current fiat currencies as political constructs and David Graber’s Debt: The First 5000...
Jade, Scepters, and Seats of Power: Symbols of Authority on the Central American Coast, 300 BC-AD 300 (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Coastal Connections: Pacific Coastal Links from Mexico to Ecuador" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper documents a widespread shift during the period from 300 BC-AD 300 toward symbolism associated with authority and rulership along the Pacific coast, throughout the region spanning between southern Chiapas and the Nicoya Peninsula of Costa Rica. During this period, several notable changes in burial patterns,...
Juntando La Junta: Bringing Together Ceramics Research in the La Junta Region of West Texas (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The La Junta de los Ríos (or La Junta) region of West Texas and Northeast Chihuahua is composed of villages scattered around the confluence of the Rio Conchos and Rio Grande. Based on limited investigations, La Junta village sites (AD 1200-1684) appear to be archeologically similar to, yet distinct from, adjacent Mogollon groups. While the region has been...
LA 38326: An Unusual Late Formative Site in Southeastern New Mexico (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. LA 38326 encompasses what was apparently a sustained settlement on a high bluff edge overlooking the Pecos River Valley in the Carlsbad area of southeastern New Mexico. The site was first recorded in the 1980s during investigations for the Brantley Reservoir, and recently SWCA and Lone Mountain Archaeological Services conducted work here as part of a...
La colección Chupícuaro del Museo Nacional de Antropología: Conformación e investigaciones (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Reassessing Chupícuaro–Cuicuilco Relationships in Light of Ceramic Production (Formative Mesoamerica)" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A finales de la década de 1910 llegaban al Museo Nacional de México los primeros objetos de la cultura Chupícuaro como parte de la colección Guillermo Heredia. Posteriormente en 1926 se integraban aquellos que procedían de las excavaciones de Ramón Mena y Porfirio Aguirre, y durante los...
"La del estribo": The Formative funerary goblets from Tetimpa, Puebla, Mexico (2018)
A Mexican slang expression, "la del estribo" (one for the stirrup) refers to the extra glass before departing, the one that you take to continue your path. In many cultures, social drinking reinforces the collective fabric: to seal an accord, to pledge peace, or to celebrate the start or the end of an event. As death is the most crucial instance that both signals closure and new beginnings, today, as in the past, funerals often include libations. In the village of Tetimpa, some beverage was...
La Interaccion regional de Xochitecatl-Cacaxtla durante el Formativo en el valle Tlaxcala-Puebla. 800 a.C. - 200 d.C. (2018)
El surgimiento del Centro Regional de Xochitecatl-Cacaxtla tiene sus orígenes en los primeros asentamientos aldeanos del Valle de Tlaxcala, la elección del lugar donde se construyó se debe a la ubicación estratégica entre los ejes de los volcanes que rematan el valle reconstruyendo un paisaje sagrado y también por el acceso y control de las rutas de intercambio con la cuenca de México, el Valle de Morelos y el Golfo y Oaxaca. Su área de interacción y control fue cambiando en el Transcurso del...
La Playa in the Broader Early Agricultural Period (2024)
This is an abstract from the "13,000 Years of Adaptation in the Sonoran Desert at La Playa, Sonora" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This presentation will situate La Playa site within a broader narrative of the development of the Early Agricultural period (EAP). We review evidence for the obvious parallels of technological development that occurred at La Playa and other EAP sites in both Northwest Mexico and the US Southwest. These changes are then...
Landfalls, Sunbursts, and the Capacha Problem: The Case for a Pacific Coastal Interaction Community in Early Formative Period Mesoamerica (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Coastal Connections: Pacific Coastal Links from Mexico to Ecuador" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the 1960s, Ford argued that the first Pacific coastal Mexican pottery should more closely resemble that of northern South America than of early highland Mexican wares of the Tehuacán tradition. In the 1970s and 1980s, Kelly argued that Colima’s Capacha phase represented one of several "landfalls" of technological and...
Lapidary Objects from a Funerary Context: The Origin to the Last Abode (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Ways to Do, Ways to Inhabit, Ways to Interact: An Archaeological View of Communities and Daily Life" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Within of the daily activities of a population, there were the events of the death of community members. These practices led the population to look for certain objects that needed to be placed next to the deceased people in the burial process with different functions and meanings. But...
Late Pleistocene-Early Holocene Archaeozoology and Paleontology at the Basin of Mexico: A Reappraisal 40 Years after Early Views (2019)
This is an abstract from the "The Legacies of The Basin of Mexico: The Ecological Processes in the Evolution of a Civilization, Part 2" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Back in 1970s, a great effort was undertaken to synthethize the knowledge of human and environmental relationships in the Basin of Mexico, which could be extended to at least 24,000 years BP. Since then, further studies were warranted after initial results and research has been...
Life and Death at the mouth of the River Loa: Bioarchaeological and biogeochemical analysis of human remains from Formative Period northern Chile (2015)
Recent research has shown that during the Formative Period (1500 B.C.-A.D. 500), in northern Chile’s Atacama Desert life was sustained and enriched by inter-zonal movement and networks of exchange of both prestige goods and staple materials. In order to further detail these phenomena, a series of five cemeteries in the region of Caleta Huelén were recently excavated. In this work, we present the results of contextualized bioarchaeological and biogeochemical analysis of over 30 individuals,...
Lifeways at the Onset of Urbanization in Central Mexico: Initial Findings from Ceramic Analysis and Residential Excavations at Middle Formative Tlalancaleca, Puebla. (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Tlalancaleca is located in the western reaches of the Puebla-Tlaxcala Valley in Central Mexico and was one of the region's largest urban centers during its apogee in the Terminal Formative period (100 BC - AD 250). The pathway to this urban apogee is less well understood but a promising area of inquiry lies in the process of population aggregation that...
Local and Imported Ceramics from a Feasting Assemblage at Etlatongo: Preliminary INAA Results (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Instrumental neutron activation analysis (INAA) conducted on a late Middle Formative ceramic sample recently excavated at Etlatongo, in the Mixteca Alta of Oaxaca, Mexico, demonstrates both local ceramic production and regional interaction with the Valley of Oaxaca. A total of 78 vessel fragments dating to the Yucuita phase (500-300 BCE) were recovered from...
Long-Term Use of Local Clays in Potting Traditions during Early Urbanization in the Nochixtlán Valley of the Mixteca Alta, Oaxaca, Mexico, 500–100 BCE (2023)
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. The Mixteca Alta Ceramic Study (MACS) in the Nochixtlán Valley of Oaxaca, Mexico, aims to understand how early urbanization in the valley impacted potters’ crafting techniques over time and space. Early urbanization in the valley spanned the Yucuita and Early Ramos ceramic phases (500–100 BCE) of the Middle to...
A Look at the Formative in Northwestern Colorado: Similarities and Differences in the Cultural Assemblages within the Fremont in the Colorado River Drainage Basin (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent excavations in Northwest Colorado indicate that between 1100 BP and 800 BP, some Fremont structures in the area contained elements similar to sites found throughout the upper Colorado Plateau. Adobe rimmed hearths, grass and cedar in roof construction, and rock slab coverings on roofs are evident in Northwest Colorado and elsewhere. The question is,...
Mapping Teotihuacan’s Inception: Patlachique Phase Ceramics Distribution on the Lidar Map (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Patlachique Phase (100 BCE–ca.100 CE) is underrepresented in the archaeological record since most sites were probably covered by the Classic Period city of Teotihuacan (200–550 CE). This phase likely represents the beginning of the urbanization process in the Teotihuacan Valley, during a period of exponential growth seen in Central Mexico. We examined the...
The Material Culture of Maroon Communities in the Early Circum-Caribbean (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Disentanglement: Reimagining Early Colonial Trajectories in the Americas" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper examines early maroon settlements of the Circum-Caribbean and is based upon original research in a wide assortment of Spanish archives, as well as archaeological investigations of African sites in the Americas. As in Gracia Real de Santa Teresa de Mose, in Spanish Florida, I find Africans readily adapted...
The Materiality and Creation of Constructed Space at Etlatongo, Oaxaca, Mexico (2018)
This paper explores the ontological relationality between humans and the creation of space during the Cruz B phase (1200/1150-850 BC) in the late Early Formative Etlatongo, in the Mixteca Alta of Oaxaca. In particular, we focus on how the use of bedrock afforded the construction of a ‘lived’ place. By looking at the materiality of its intrinsic properties, we argue that the Mixtecs of Etlatongo intentionally used bedrock as part of construction episodes in the formation of a public space so that...
Middle Formative Plant Use on the Taraco Peninsula, Bolivia (2015)
The Middle Formative (800-250B.C.) on the Taraco Peninsula was a period of burgeoning status and wealth differentiation that saw the rise of platform mound construction and the intensification of quinoa farming nearby the shores of Lake Titicaca. This paper will present data from a macrobotanical analysis of the site Alto Pukara, a 3.25 hectare village excavated in 2000 and 2001. A thorough examination of the distribution of charred plant remains across all contexts of a single structure will be...
The Middle to Late Formative Olmec Chipped-Stone Assemblage from Los Soldados, Veracruz, Mexico (2015)
The use of chipped-stone in domestic Olmec contexts has only recently become a focus of archaeological investigation. With the publication of data on the chipped-stone assemblages from the Olmec centers of San Lorenzo and Tres Zapotes in the last few years, a picture emerges of great diversity in materials consumed and technologies used by commoners and non-commoners alike. The Middle to Late Formative household chipped-stone assemblage from the 2010 excavations at Los Soldados, in the...
Monumental Architecture in Central Mexico during the Terminal Formative: New Findings from the Tlalancaleca Archaeological Project, Puebla (2018)
Tlalancaleca was one of the largest settlements before the rise of Teotihuacan in Central Mexico and has been known for the presence of early talud-tablero facades (a combination of sloping walls and vertical panels) and other cultural elements inherited by Teotihuacan. This paper presents preliminary results of excavations, which were carried at monumental structures at Tlalancaleca. It examines the construction techniques used for monument building (including talud-tablero facades), the degree...
Monumental Structure, Sacred Landscape, and Cosmology: The Late Formative Period Peruvian Site of Jequetepeque-Jatanca (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. How does architectural construction relate to the surrounding landscape and a broader cosmological framework? This paper discusses the relationships among architecture, geography, and cosmology at the site of Jatanca in the Jequetepeque Valley on the northern coast of Peru. This site was occupied mainly during the Late Formative Period (approximately 500 BCE...
More than Just Cliff Dwellings: Results of Survey at Navajo National Monument, Arizona (2018)
The Museum of Northern Arizona (MNA) is collaborating with the National Park Service to complete a comprehensive survey of Navajo National Monument in northern Arizona. The spectacular cliff dwellings of Keet Seel and Betatakin have been known to science since the early 1900s, but no comprehensive inventory has been conducted of the entire monument. Survey in 2016 focused on the mesa top and canyons in the vicinity of Betatakin, resulting in the discovery of two smaller contemporaneous...
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...