Formative (Other Keyword)
126-150 (172 Records)
Edited volume of the field report for the 2003-2004 excavations of La Blanca, Guatemala
Public Space, Sacred Place: Early Monumental Architecture and Corporate Identity in the Mixteca Alta, Oaxaca (2018)
The Early Formative evinces the emergence of public space, and more complex communities, in Mesoamerica. Previous archaeological research at the site of Etlatongo, Oaxaca, Mexico, identified a large village during the late Early Formative/Cruz B phase (1200/1150 – 850 BC), including an area tentatively identified as early public space. The Formative Etlatongo Project has concluded three seasons, from 2015 – 2017, of large-scale excavations, confirming the identification of public space in the...
Puertos, materiales y productos de intercambio (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. Desde los primeros estudios arqueológicos desarrollados en el occidente mesoamericano han sido encontrados diversos rasgos culturales, vocablos y artefactos similares a materiales existentes en el noroeste sudamericano. Destacan entre ellos los materiales Capacha, los de tumbas de tiro y la metalurgia, aportando...
Quotidian and Ritual Use of Maize at Early Formative Etlatongo, Oaxaca, Mexico (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent research on subsistence systems in Early Formative (1600–900 BCE) Mesoamerican communities contest longstanding concepts linking the growth of early sociopolitical complexity with full-time agriculture. Lowland-focused studies have introduced mixed nonagricultural models in coastal regions that were able to support both sedentary groups and much larger...
Radiocarbon dates from Baño Negro and Cerro Quiotepec, Chilapa, Guerrero (2016)
Recent dates from two sites in the Chilapa area of the Montaña Baja of Guerrero state, Baño Negro and Cerro Quiotepec-Oxtotitlan, throw light on the Formative horizon temporality in the area, including the Oxtotitlan rock shelter. Baño Negro ceramics indicate continuous Early through Late Formative occupation, and the radiocarbon dates confirm Early Formative occupation, perhaps earlier than previously thought.
Real Alto and the Origins of Valdivia (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent geomorphological analysis of shoreline deposits in Manabí and Santa Elena provinces (Ecuador) provides evidence of significant mid-Holocene marine transgression. Newly obtained radiocarbon dates from relict coastal features places these changes to the Valdivia Phase (4400 to 1500 cal BC). Arguments for and against this phenomenon are reviewed with...
Reaping the Rewards of Incipient Agriculture from the Land to the Sea and the Mangroves In Between (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. During the Archaic to Early Formative transition, the Soconusco populations began adopting more sedentary subsistence strategies and investing more in their local environments. Evidence from sediment cores demonstrates that during the Archaic, populations were burning inland landscapes and starting to grow maize. The environmental effects of incipient...
Recent Archaeological Research in Gorgona Island, Colombia (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This research, framed within the problematic environmental archaeology, aims to see the environments used by pre-Hispanic settlers from the analysis of plant and animal remains. Zooarchaeological analyses of invertebrates describe a rocky, sandy, mixed intertidal environment typical of the Pacific Ocean. In the case of vertebrates, a lizard element...
Reconsidering the Feathered Serpent in Mesoamerica’s Formative Period (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Tales of the Feathered Serpent: Refining Our Understanding of an Enigmatic Mesoamerican Being" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Studies of feathered serpent imagery during Mesoamerica's Formative Period range widely in their conclusions, with little agreement about the parameters of inquiry, associated iconographic conventions, or even what constitutes a "feathered" serpent. Images of serpentine creatures have been...
Reconstructing the Habitual Workspaces of a Middle Caddo Period Structure at Site 41FN244 (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Bois d’Arc Lake archaeological project was carried out by AR Consultants in coordination with the Caddo Nation of Oklahoma, the Texas Historical Commission, and the Tulsa District of US Army Corps of Engineers. These investigations were to determine the National Register eligibility of Site 41FN244. Funded by the North Texas Municipal Water District,...
Recreation, Rockshelters, and Resource Management (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the summer of 2018, New Mexico State University (NMSU) staff and students surveyed 120 acres on the Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks National Monument. The New Mexico Bureau of Land Management (BLM), which manages this monument, provided funding for this project. The survey occurred in seven high-priority parcels near Bishop’s Cap, where frequent recreational...
Regional Integration during the Late Preclassic in Ucí, Yucatán (2018)
Regional integration as materialized by the connections created through sacbeob can widely transform political, economic and social institutions in the participant communities. Perceiving the process through dichotomies such as center-periphery or paramount-subordinate clouds the agency of the multiple stakeholders involved in the matter. Active manipulation of social systems by intermediate elites and the commoner population seems to have had a great influence on the general process of...
Rethinking Ecological Verticality for the Initial Period: A Case from South-Central Peru (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Murra’s model of the vertical archipelago continues to reverberate in discussions of ecological exploitation across Andean regions, while other scholars have argued that such frameworks essentialize Andean societies by projecting ethnohistorical data onto the deep past. New ceramic, microbotanical, and isotopic evidence from Atalla and other sites in the...
Rethinking the Formative Stage: A reconsideration from two archaeological sites on the Colombian Caribbean lowlands (2017)
The concept of formative in Colombia is traditionally framed as a transitional period within the unilineal cultural evolution in the Americas, characterized for several indicators such as sedentary life, diversity of socio-economic forms and the emergence of new technologies such as pottery. In this paper, we revised two archaeological sites: Monsu and Puerto Hormiga, incorporating zooarchaeological analysis, technological and use–wear analyses to provide understanding into past human behavior...
Revisiting the Chronology of Chavin de Huantar (2016)
Chavin de Huantar continues to play a central role in our understanding of the Central Andes during the Initial Period and Early Horizon and thus an understanding of it chronological position remains crucial. This talk will present a critique of the contribution of recent work at Chavin to this theme, including a consideration of both ceramic and radiocarbon sequences. A new set of radiocarbon measurements based on the analysis of animal bone from the residential sector will be presented and...
Revisiting the Early Oaxacan Village: New Perspectives on Some of Mesoamerica’s First Settled Communities (2021)
This is an abstract from the "A Construir Puentes / Building Bridges: Diálogos en Oaxaca Archaeology a través de las Fronteras" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Since its publication in 1976, *The Early Mesoamerican Village has been a landmark for the systematic study of early settled communities. Based on research in the Valley of Oaxaca, *EMV has helped many students of archaeology to better understand household and community organization and...
Revitalization and Acts of Renewal at the Kareycoto Mound: The Terminal Early Horizon at the Cosma Complex, Ancash, Peru (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Peering into the Night: Transition, Sociopolitical Organization, and Economic Dynamics after the Dusk of Chavín in the North Central Andes" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper examines the Upper Nepeña Valley, along the Jimbe River branch and its tributaries. Numerous Early Horizon centers were documented throughout the upper valley, with a distinctive settlement pattern and construction at sites within the...
Ritual and Domestic Plant Use on the Southern Pacific Coast of Mexico: A Starch Grain Study of the Formative to Classic Period Transition at Izapa (2018)
In southern Mesoamerica, the transition from the Formative period to Classic period (100 B.C.- A.D. 400) was a time of population decline, cessation of monumental construction, and the abandonment of many sites. Environmental explanations such as drought and volcanic activity have been proposed as potential trigger factors for the widespread collapse at the close of the Formative period. Current evidence suggests that residents of the early capital of Izapa, located on a piedmont environmental...
The Role of Lowland Tropics as Centers of Landscape Domestication during the Middle Holocene in South America (2018)
The archaeological record of the Middle Holocene is lacking in many areas of lowland South America. The reasons for such hiatuses are yet not clear, but there is an emerging pattern showing that the areas where one finds complete records of human occupation that span most of the Holocene are typically located on estuaries, extensive floodplains or other wetlands normally placed at ecotones. On the other hand, mounting paleoeocological data shows that the climatic conditions of the Middle...
The Scale of Formative Transitions in the Americas: Inferences Based on the Texture and Timing of Demographic Changes (2016)
This paper examines the large-scale texture and timing of demographic transitions associated with the development of settled agricultural life in the Americas. Based on previous work concerning the Neolithic Demographic Transition (NDT) worldwide, we draw on two sources of published data (skeletal remains and surface survey) to trace Formative-era population growth rates across a huge region, including the US Southwest, Mesoamerica, Central America, and the Andes. The goal is to assess the...
Sealing Ritual Spaces of a Formative Site by the Early Cajamarca Culture (2016)
Pacopampa is one of the largest ceremonial centers in the Formative Period located at the north highlands of Peru. Almost all the ritual space was destroyed after the Formative Period, however, the square sunken court was reused by the people belonging to the Early Cajamarca Period. Some platforms and rooms were constructed at the center of the court and a series of ritual activities associated with a lot of miniature pottery could be observed. After that unusual activities the court was orderly...
seibalSim: toward modeling communities (not populations) of Early Formative Mesoamerica (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In "The Forms of Capital," Pierre Bourdieu writes: “[t]he social world is accumulated history, and if it is not to be reduced to a discontinuous series of instantaneous mechanical equilibria between agents who are treated as interchangeable particles, one must reintroduce into it the notion of capital and with it, accumulation and all its effects.” His attempt...
The Sets of Figurines in Western Mesoamerica: Contexts and Possible Interpretations During the Formative (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Mesoamerican Figurines in Context. New Insights on Tridimensional Representations from Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In Western Mexico, as in Mesoamerica generally, anthropomorphic and zoomorphic figurines are rather often found in groups, either in caches or in funerary context. These particular contexts allow substantial advances in our understanding of their uses and possible meanings, in particular...
Settlement Locations and Soil Fertility in the Volcán Barú Region of Panama (2018)
Analyses of settlement locations (such as hamlets and farmsteads) within the Volcán Barú region of Panama and their associated periods of occupation suggest that during certain times, such as the Chiriquí Period, soil fertility was an important factor in determining the location. However, during other periods, it does not seem to have been significant. There also is a centralization of the population during the late formative, or Late Bugaga Phase, which correlates with previous findings of...
Shell and Symbolism in Mesoamerica and the Andes: Are There Parallels? (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. Much research on the links between Mesoamerica and South America has focused on the methods of exploitation of shell (e.g. Spondylus, Strombus) and its possible trade across sub-regions. However, superficially similar methods of exploitation may be local solutions to common problems and methods for sourcing shell remain...