Mortuary archaeology (Other Keyword)
101-125 (217 Records)
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 will employ GIS in exploring the experiential aspects of the burial process in Early Bronze Age North Mesopotamia, with a particular attention to funerary soundscapes. To investigate the potential impact of vocal and musical sound, a 10 m resolution digital elevation model (DEM) was developed, and the "System for...
Landscapes of Death and Burial in the South Caucasus: The Kurgans of Naxçivan, Azerbaijan (2016)
While burials have long been an important source of archaeological information, they have traditionally been studied mainly from a site-based perspective. This traditional view focuses on the form of the burial, the grave goods contained, and osteological evidence on the age, sex and health of the interred individual. By contrast, the landscape approach studies burials as part of a broader natural and cultural landscape that extends beyond site boundaries. This project focuses on kurgan burials...
Landscapes of the Dead: Using GIS to Model Social Relationships in a Large Bronze Age Cemetery (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Geographic Information System (GIS) technology is an important tool for examining social relationships in large horizontally stratified cemeteries. This study applies GIS-based cluster analysis to identify multiscalar patterning at the Middle Bronze Age Maros cemetery at Ostojićevo, Serbia. Three successive scalar clusters were identified: (i) primary...
Las practicas funerarias del Formativo en la costa ecuatoriana : resultado de (2018)
El presente estudio se organiza en torno a una dobla problemática relacionado al Formativo de la costa ecuatoriana (4400 – 300 BC): el examen de los gestos funerarios y su comparación en una perspectiva diacrónica e intercultural. Con un examen teórico y estadístico se puede identificar normas funerarias propias a cada cultura. La comparación intercultural permite de subrayar similitudes y diferencias entre las diferentes culturas del Formativo. Procede de los diferentes trabajos arqueológicos...
The Last Great Escape: Recovery of 1st Lt. Ewart Sconiers, an American World War II Bombardier Imprisoned at the Stalag Luft III POW Camp (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Applying the Power of Partnerships to the Search for America's Missing in Action" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Like many recoveries, locating 1st Lt. Ewart Sconiers required research, persistence, and good old-fashioned luck. While imprisoned at the Stalag Luft III POW camp in German-occupied Poland, complications from an injury sent Sconiers to a hospital in a neighboring town—where he died. His burial occurred in...
Late Horizon Mortuary Traditions at Las Huacas, Chincha: Preliminary Results from a Subterranean Collective Tomb (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeological and osteological analyses of burial features allow archaeologists to explore questions related to an individual’s life, activities, social status and potential role in society. This poster presents the analysis of a Late Horizon tomb from the site of Las Huacas in the Chincha Valley of Perú, with an emphasis on human skeletal remains. Las Huacas...
Laying Down with Dogs: The Role of Canis familiaris in Mongolia and Transbaikal during the Xiongnu Period (2023)
This is an abstract from the "From the Altai to the Arctic: New Results and New Directions in the Archaeology of North and Inner Asia" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Xiongnu period (ca. 250 BC–AD 150) of Mongolia and Transbaikal marks a dramatic change in the frequency and treatment of domestic dogs (Canis familiaris) in the archaeological record. While this shift in burial and consumptive practices are indirectly acknowledged in the academic...
Life and Death of Lakam Elites at the Maya Center of El Palmar, Campeche, Mexico (2018)
During the Late Classic period (A.D. 600-800), Maya non-royal elites frequently appeared in courtly scenes, which are depicted on polychrome vessels and carved monuments. While epigraphic studies over the last two decades have gradually shed light on their political and ritual roles, little is known about their life histories and mortuary practices. One group of these elites held the title of lakam, which has been reported only at three archaeological sites. We detected tangible evidence of...
Linking Life and Death at the Early–Mid-Holocene Hunter-Gatherer Cemetery of Zvejnieki, Lativa, Northern Europe (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Northeast Asian Prehistoric Hunter-Gather Lifeways: Multidisciplinary, Individual Life History Approach" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The nature of the relationship between the living and the dead as seen through funerary rites is central to many aspects of archaeological interpretation. Indeed, this was the focus of early processual/postprocessual debates, with the former seeing a “real,” if distorted, connection...
Lipidomic Analysis of Arch Street Project Brain Tissue (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Bones and Burials in Philadelphia: The Arch Street Project’s Multidisciplinary Research" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Arch Street Project provided desiccated brain tissue recovered from a cemetery uncovered in Philadelphia, PA to the DeBusk College of Osteopathic Medicine Metabolomics Unit. As the Arch Street cemetery burials predate chemical fixation funerary practices, analysis of biological soft tissue...
Local Mortuary Practice and Inca Imperial Conquest in the Middle Chincha Valley, Peru (2019)
This is an abstract from the "From the Paracas Culture to the Inca Empire: Recent Archaeological Research in the Chincha Valley, Peru" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. I investigate the relationship between local mortuary practice and imperial conquest in the middle Chincha Valley of Peru, a landscape that was incorporated into the Inca Empire in the 15th century. Indigenous groups developed strategies for dealing with invasive imperial control. One...
A Look at Local Populations during Wari Expansion: Bioarchaeology and Funerary Contexts at Ak’awillay, Cusco, Peru (2018)
Although the climate and rich cultural history of Peru frequently offers a perfect setting for bioarchaeological analysis, the pre-Inca peoples of the central Andean highlands often lack full representation within that analysis. Yet, excavations at Ak’awillay, a village in the Cusco region, between 2006 and 2016, revealed 79 bodies. Most of the remains recovered from the site date to the Middle Horizon (AD 600–1000); however, previous analysis of the architecture and artifacts at the site...
Love beyond What Is Lost: Expressions of Kinship through Mortuary Practice at Phaleron Cemetery (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. While discussions of kinship in Ancient Greece have largely been limited to the elite and their families, the Archaic cemetery of Phaleron (700–480 BC) provides a unique opportunity to investigate kinship relationships among people of lower socioeconomic status. This is especially true of interments of children, which can be interpreted not only as a...
Lucayan Burials in the Bahama Archipelago (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Advances in the Archaeology of the Bahama Archipelago" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The first archaeological evidence for the native peoples of the Bahama archipelago was found in dry caves, many of which were excavated for cave earth to fertilize agricultural fields. Human remains were found in some of these caves, but in such small numbers it was thought this could not have been the only location in which the...
Making an Ancestor at Actuncan: Exploring the Origins, Health, Burial Treatment and Taphonomy of a Late Classic Maya Residential Eastern Structure (2018)
The patio adjacent to the eastern structure of Group 1 at the site of Actuncan served as a burial ground for generations. At least twelve individuals in more than seven graves were buried at one of the oldest residential groups at the site during the Late Classic period (AD 600-900). Eastern structures were used to bury revered ancestors in the Belize River Valley, but nearly all of the Actuncan Group 1 burials were disturbed by later burials. When was it acceptable to disturb an ancestor, and...
A Manteño Burial from Buen Suceso, Ecuador (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. When Spanish explorers arrived in South America, sea-faring Manteño peoples dominated much of the northern and central Ecuadorian coast. While Manteño sites and technologies are well-documented, particularly at large sites such as Cerro Jaboncillo, many questions about Manteño society and mortuary traditions remain, particularly concerning people who lived on...
Mapping God's Little Acre: Digital Documentation of Newport's Colonial African Burial Ground (2023)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Paper / Report Submission (General Sessions)", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. The remarkable site of God’s Little Acre (GLA), the historic African and African American section of Newport’s Common Burial Ground, comprises the largest surviving corpus of gravemarkers from a colonial era African cemetery anywhere in the United States. In 2019, members of the Rhode Island Historic Cemetery Advisory Commission...
Mastoid Osteoma on the Skeleton of a Known Individual from the Bethel Cemetery (2023)
This is an abstract from the "The Bethel Cemetery Relocation Project: Historical, Osteological, and Material Culture Analyses of a Nineteenth-Century Indiana Cemetery" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Elizabeth Poland was a member of one of the prominent families interred at the Bethel Cemetery, located in Indianapolis, IN; she died in 1896 at the age of 76. Her skeleton indicated several pathological conditions including pedal arthritis, vertebral...
Material Geographies of Multi-Family Neolithic Households (2018)
This paper explores how people within Neolithic villages were potentially connected to co-resident multi-family households, and considers the potential material footprint of multi-family households within Neolithic villages. As seen from ethnographic cases, in some cases residential buildings of House Societies had a range of functions including as dwelling locations, origin-places, council houses, or meeting-houses. Echoing other research this paper decouples the social unit of the House from a...
The materiality of life and death: Dress ornaments and shifting identities at Hasanlu, Iran (2017)
The site of Hasanlu, Iran, was destroyed thoroughly by a marauding army in approximately 800 BCE, leaving a hulk of smoking rubble that was a virtual tomb for the hundreds of residents and combatants who weren’t able to escape its citadel. The excavations of Hasanlu, led by Robert H. Dyson of the University of Pennsylvania Museum, took place between 1956 and 1977, and uncovered a remarkable range of contexts containing personal ornaments within the relatively narrow historical horizon of...
The Maya Cranial Photogrammetry Project (2018)
The Maya Cranial Photogrammetry Project aims to create a large digital repository for the purpose of comparative shape analyses to test hypotheses relating to ethnic and political distinctions among ancient Maya groups. The shape of skeletons reflects a combination of genetic and environmental influences on development and thus comparison of skeletal variability provides an important means to reconstruct microevolutionary processes. In particular, because of its complex morphology the skull has...
Maya Funerary Practices and Their Significance in Reproducing and Maintaining Social Status and Identity: Evidence from Copan, Honduras, and Palenque, Mexico (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Susan Gillespie remarked the importance of human body and funerary ritual in the process of transmission of memory and legitimation of social status among Maya royalty. Would this process be visible in domestic contexts, too? To answer this question, I chose to study domestic funerary record, context where an archaeologist can find the reflection of collective...
Medieval Transylvanian Church Burial Patterns and Demographics (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Papdomb archaeological site is located immediately outside the village of Văleni (Hungarian: Patakfalva), Romania in the historic region of Transylvania. Papdomb comprises the ruins of a medieval Székely church and its associated cemetery. Human interment within the walls of the church started in the second half of the 12th century and extended to the...
Methodological Approaches to Search and Recovery of World War II MIAs (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. 78,000 US Service Personnel are still “Missing in Action” (MIA). From World War II, they are located in both the Pacific and European theatres. History Flight, a nonprofit organization, has dedicated over 10 years to the search and recovery of these US Servicemen who are still MIAs through a transdisciplinary approach. Initial steps logically stem from...
Middle Age Childhood: Bioarchaeology and Health of Children from a Medieval Cemetery Site (Gz10) in Giecz, Poland (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Life and Death in Medieval Poland" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The medieval cemetery in Giecz (site 10) is part of a complex of the early Piast state stronghold (Giecz, Greater Poland voivodeship, Poland). The cemetery is dated to the eleventh–twelfth centuries. The site has been excavated since 2014 as Slavia Field School in Mortuary Archaeology. During the seasons 2014–2021, over 150 graves have been discovered....