Mortuary archaeology (Other Keyword)
101-125 (330 Records)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Individualities have been difficult to identify in Classic Period Teotihuacan, as this multiethnic urban culture presents itself as a faceless society where inequality must be addressed with new perspectives and methodologies. In this poster, we explore whether this inequality is perceptible through biological sex differentiation in mortuary evidence,...
Exploring Targeted Postmortem Investigative Practices at the Milwaukee County Poor Farm Cemetery (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Milwaukee County Poor Farm Cemetery is an umbrella term used to describe the four cemeteries that were used by Milwaukee County, WI from 1878 through 1974 for the burial of the indigent, unclaimed, institutionalized, and anatomized. The focus of this research is the twice-excavated Cemetery II, in use between 1882 and 1925. Approximately one-quarter of...
Exploring Temporal and Geographical Aspects of Chumash Mortuary Practice and Ceremonial Integration (2024)
This is an abstract from the "AD 1150 to the Present: Ancient Political Economy to Contemporary Materiality—Archaeological Anthropology in Honor of Jeanne E. Arnold" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ethnographic and ethnohistoric evidence indicate that certain ceremonial objects were exclusively associated with 'Antap ritual specialists and were used in multi-community Chumash religious ceremonies. Analyses of the evolution of the form of these...
Exploring the Evidence for Infectious Diseases in Byzantine Thebes, Greece (2018)
The excavation of an early and middle Byzantine cemetery, located in the former Sanctuary of Ismenion Apollo in Thebes, Greece, has provided an opportunity to examine the impact of infectious diseases in post-Classical Greece. The cemetery appears to be associated with a previously undocumented hospital, probably connected with the nearby church of St. Luke the Evangelist. The skeletons were found in rectangular rock-cut graves, all of which contained multiple burials. Two non-standard graves...
Exploring the Mortuary Landscape at Kuelap, Peru, using Geographic Information Systems (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Mortuary placement is one form of ritual action that communities undertake to remember the dead. The location of the dead is important for considering social memory, a source of collective knowledge and experiences that shapes social group identity. This allows anthropologists to ask questions about how human social relationships transform living...
Exploring trends in mortuary behavior among the ancient Maya of northwestern Belize (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Ancient Maya Landscapes in Northwestern Belize, Part I" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Studies of ancient Maya mortuary patterns have asserted that Maya burials do not adhere to a singular mortuary pattern (Ashmore and Geller 2005, Fitzsimmons 2009, Geller 2004, Ruz Lhuillier 1965, Welsh 1988). However, many of these same studies also suggest that a review of data specific to certain contexts (inter-site, time period,...
Fardos Funerarios de los Antiguos Paracas en el Valle Medio de Chincha, Costa Sur del 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. Este trabajo presenta los resultados del análisis bioarqueológico realizado a ocho fardos funerarios del periodo Paracas Tardío (400-200 BCE) relacionados con el estilo cavernas que fueron recuperados en el Cerro del Gentil, valle de Chincha. Los fardos funerarios asociados a este...
Fase cultural Comala en Colima (200-600 dC): El uso de dos tumbas inusuales en esta etapa (2025)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. La Fase Comala (200-600 d.C.) corresponde a un periodo de desarrollo cultural del Occidente Mesoamericano, el cual se caracterizó por el uso generalizado en toda el área geográfica de la región, del denominado sistema funerario "Tumbas de Tiro"; se trata de espacios excavados en el subsuelo, generalmente de manera circular, los cuales profundizaban los...
Fauna from the Eneolithic Mortuary Site of Verteba Cave, Ukraine (2015)
Animals associated with human burials provide insight into mortuary rituals of ancient groups. This study is the examination of faunal remains from Verteba Cave (3,951- 2,620 cal BC), a site in western Ukraine associated with the latest period of Eneolithic Tripolye-Cucuteni (TC) culture. Relative abundances of taxa were compared to published data from other TC sites. Remains from red deer and cattle are the most frequent fauna of the Verteba Cave assemblage. The sample also has a high...
Feasting with the Dead: Preliminary Analysis of Faunal Remains at the Put Dragulina Roman Cemetery (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Put Dragulina, a Roman cemetery site dating between 100 AD and 300 AD, was excavated as part of rescue projects during 2011 and 2017 in Trogir, Croatia. At least 84 individual graves were excavated with associated burial goods. Along with the recovery of human remains, over 250 fragments of animal bone were recovered. This poster presents the identification...
Fire and Death in the Great Platform of Tzintzuntzan, Mexico (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Tzintzuntzan, Capital of the Tarascan Empire: New Perspectives" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Just as fire and firewood were considered very important elements in the cosmovision of the Tarascan culture, so were war and sacrificial practices. Prisoners of war were sacrificed to two types of deities, the first linked to the celestial bodies and the second linked to the earth and water. Historical sources mention that...
Forms and Meanings of Human Fire Exposure among the Northern Lowland Maya (2015)
This paper explores some of the forms, occasions, and meanings of human fire exposure among the Northern Lowland Maya during the Classic period. Conceptual points of departure are native concepts of heat, smoke and fire, together with their transformative powers in human beings, ritual enactment, and physicality. These notions provide blueprints for the spectrum of treatments documented in the area’s mortuary record, spanning veneration, profanation and/or sacrifice. Combining forensic...
Fragmented Bodies: Early Bronze Age Cremation Burials in Kilmagadwood, Scotland (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. There is a clear dichotomy between the practice of inhumation and the rite of cremation. From an anthropological perspective, a community’s preference for one or another reflects changes in its beliefs system. Conceivably, this occurred during the transition from the Neolithic to the Bronze Age when cremation became dominant. The symbolism that accompanies the...
From Individual to Collective Burial in the Mesolithic of Iberia (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Recent Research on the Paleolithic in the Mediterranean Region" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The transition from individual to collective burial underscores implicit, but poorly understood, changes in social organization within the Mesolithic and between the Mesolithic and the Neolithic. Mosaic in character, this transition is well marked in Cantabria and Portugal, less so in other regions of Iberia. Mortuary...
From Mounds and Museums: Building a Bioarchaeology of the Early Bronze Age in the Apuseni Region of Transylvania (2018)
The Apuseni Mountains of southwest Transylvania, Romania, are amongst the richest gold and copper procurement zones in the world. Metals from this region helped fuel the rise of inequality across Europe during Late Prehistory, and the area is also home to a rich mortuary record, with archaeological survey identifying over one hundred mounded tomb cemeteries belonging to Bronze Age communities. However, none of these cemeteries have been fully excavated and only a small sample of skeletons has...
From the Dead to the Living: An Interdisciplinary Analysis of Late Period Open Sepulchers, Upper Nepeña Drainage, Ancash, Peru (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Beyond the Ancestors: New Approaches to Andean "Open Sepulchers"" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The ubiquity of open sepulcher type funerary contexts in the Andean highlands is a salient fact. Previous work and new surveys in the Pamparomás and Chaclancayo valleys of the Upper Nepeña Drainage have identified more than 60 such funerary contexts. Over the past two years, systematic excavations of selected sites coupled...
From Villanovan to Etruscan Mortuary Goods: The Ceramic Assemblages of Four Seventh-Century BCE Pit Graves from the Site of San Giuliano (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Etruscan Centralization to Medieval Marginalization: Shifts in Settlement and Mortuary Traditions at San Giuliano, Italy" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The San Giuliano necropolis, located within the Marturanum Regional Park in northern Lazio, Italy, is well-known for its hundreds of Villanovan and Etruscan graves. As part of our mission to understand the patterns of human habitation at the site from the ninth...
Funerary Archaeology at Late Classic Palenque: The Grave Goods from Group IV (2025)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Classic Maya grave goods are traditionally understood as offerings for the afterlife or signifier of religious beliefs, identity, and socioeconomic status of the deceased. The variety of interpretations underscores the complexity of these objects, whose funerary usage is influenced by multiple factors. I examine the grave goods recovered from 41 burials...
Gender Differentiation in Jewish Memorials: An Ethnoarchaeological Examination of the Headstones in the B'nai Israel Cemetery (2015)
An ethnoarchaeological approach to the study of historic cemeteries and associated gravemarkers offers a tested and non-invasive methodology which can garner insight into the collective and personal identity of individuals within and between specific cultural groups. For the investigation of the Jewish diaspora, such enthoarchaeological studies have proven to be one of the richest sources of data on religious and cultural practices related to death and burial. Past studies have examined...
Genomic Data from Paquimé: Understanding the Cultural and Genetic Ties of the Site (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Paquimé, located in the Casas Grandes region of Northern Mexico, presents a rich cultural tradition with ties to populations to the South and North. Ancient mitochondrial DNA from Paquime’s occupants has not provided evidence of large-scale in-migration that led to the fluorescence of the site, as some scholars have hypothesized. This paper focuses on...
GIS in Vertical Spaces: An Examination of Location and Clustering of Mortuary Contexts at the Cliff Site of La Petaca, Peru (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Geographic Information Systems are often applied to archaeological contexts to analyze spatial patterns within a site and ascertain social structure and identity. Vertical sites, however, pose a problem for GIS since most analyses must occur on the horizontal plane. This is particularly troublesome for studying the Chachapoya, a Late Intermediate Period group...
Gone and All but Forgotten: An Overview of St Henry’s Cemetery (11S1742), East St. Louis, IL, 1866–1908 (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. St. Henry’s Catholic Cemetery (11S1742) in East St. Louis, IL, was interring largely German and Irish individuals from 1866 to 1908. As part of growing urbanization and societal sanitation concerns, the cemetery was closed and buried individuals were supposedly relocated by 1926. By 1951, the Illinois National Guard Armory was constructed on the site and...
Hammer on Vampires: Reconceptualization of So-Called Deviant Funerary Practices of Early Medieval Slavs (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Life and Death in Medieval Central Europe" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Slavic “deviant” funerary practices and dealings with certain dead—including decapitations, mutilations, or crushing cadavers with stones—have been of interest for mortuary archaeologists for many years. The explanation that researchers turned to most often was the one describing these practices as apotropaic in nature, as means of subduing the...
Harappan Necropolis of Rakhigarhi, India: Archaeology and Bioanthropology (2018)
The number of Harappan cemeteries so far systematically surveyed is far less than that of contemporary settlements. Necropolis site at Rakhigarhi (India) was reported earlier but in small scale investigation. Our investigation for the last three seasons (2013 to 2016) was thus designed for improving this lacuna. We first classified each burial and analyzed statistically. The Harappan people practiced rather humble burial custom, but few were found differently and these burials look more...
Health and Disease during the Ecuadorian Formative: A Case Study from Buen Suceso (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Ecuadorian Formative Period (3800-300 BC) is known for the creation of ceramics, a transition towards agriculture, and the development of sedentary settlements along the Pacific coast. These social and economic changes were often associated with declines in health, as people ate less varied agricultural diets and increasingly encountered pathogens...