Sacred landscapes (Other Keyword)
1-5 (5 Records)
Archaeological investigations of the Nohoch Tunich Bedrock Outcrop Complex (NTC) located near the pre-Hispanic Maya site of Pacbitun, Belize, revealed a karst landscape that was heavily, yet subtly modified during the Terminal Classic period (A.D. 700-900). Analysis of construction techniques reveal that the modifications were made to conform to a purposefully crude aesthetic aimed at maintaining and enhancing the wilderness essence of the outcrop, while transforming it into a cultural space....
Bringing the Landscape Home: The Materiality of Placemaking and Pilgrimage in Jornada Mogollon Settlement (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Sacred Southwestern Landscapes: Archaeologies of Religious Ecology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Among prehispanic and historic societies of the American Southwest and Mesoamerica, mountains and caves had multivalent metaphorical and symbolic meanings relating to underworld, ancestors, water, and emergence. Mountains and caves are featured among origin and emergence myths and many contemporary Pueblo societies...
Cosmic Vision: Queering Ancient Maya Scared Landscapes (2016)
As a method of deconstructing and disrupting what is normative, archaeologists have used queer theory to explore aspects of the formation and intersection of identities. In this paper I illustrate how queer theory can be used beyond the study of identity by exploring the relationships between people and places. Comprising 25 cenotes, or karstic sinkholes, Cara Blanca, Belize represents one of the highest concentrations of cenotes in the Southern Maya Lowlands. A highly sacred landscape, Cara...
The environmental context of Prôto-Je culture at Pinhal da Serra, RS, Brazil – insights from palaeoecology (2015)
Understanding the purposes and associations of burial monuments and sacred built landscapes in the Formative period of the Americas is an important research goal among archaeologists. A key step that can help us to better understand the social and spatial organisation of these cultures is determining the ecological and environmental characteristics of the landscapes within which these cultures lived and developed. Created by the Je group in south-eastern Brazil, and with more than 30 pit houses...
Long-Term Highland Maya Environmental Interaction: Integrating Archaeological, Ethnographic and Ecological Data (2016)
My ethnographic research documenting the sacred geography of the northern rim of Lake Atitlán, Guatemala, has identified numerous contemporary sacred locations linked to ecologically critical areas. Some of these are archaeological monuments, while surface surveys of most others evidence pre-Hispanic materials. Additionally, previous survey (and limited excavation) documented a number of area archaeological sites dating to the Maya Preclassic, with some exhibiting habitation up to the present;...