Monumentality (Other Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Emily Eklund.

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. Tim Ingold’s (1993) work “The Temporality of the Landscape” introduced us to the concept of taskscapes, in which an array of tasks, overlapping and interlocking, work to create a specific place in the larger landscape. I am now introducing another innovative “scape,” one used...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kendall Hills.

This is an abstract from the "The Current State of Archaeological Research across Southeast Asia" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeological research in Cambodia was traditionally relatively narrow in scope. Our knowledge of the Khmer Empire (9th to 15th century CE ) has been primarily informed via two lines of evidence: epigraphic sources, especially in the form of temple inscriptions, and art historical analysis of monumental architecture....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jarrod Burks.

This is an abstract from the "Monumental Surveys: New Insights from Landscape-Scale Geophysics" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The problem with monumental earthwork sites in Ohio is that they are, well, monumental in scale! These large sites, many topping 50 ha in area, are a major challenge for geophysical surveys because they simply require too much time to completely survey. However, recent advances in instrumentation and computers is making it...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jarrod Burks.

Ohio is home to hundreds of Woodland period (ca. 300 BC- AD 400) earthwork sites. Most contain mounds and ditch-and-embankment enclosures in geometric shapes. Site size and complexity varies widely, from small, lone circles (often surrounding a mound) in the Early Woodland to the mega-large Middle Woodland Newark Earthworks. How and why earthwork construction moved from small to massive are enduring questions yet to be solved. Recent magnetic survey in southern Ohio at two sites of moderate...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrew Lesh.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Originally the only known underground gallery between Building A and the Circular Plaza of Chavín de Huántar, the Caracoles gallery was long thought by Professor John Rick of Stanford University to be one of multiple chambers due to its three wall ducts, each exiting at an unknown location. This paper illustrates the methods developed for exploring these and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elisabeth Hildebrand. Anneke Janzen.

Characterizing the patterns and processes of early food production across Africa is difficult because the continent’s large landmass, diverse physiography, and regionally specific environments and crops hinder generalization. Due to these challenges, accounts of early food production in Africa tend to be narrative syntheses: they either present a detailed sequence of developments in one specific region, or ‘follow’ the spread of food production from the earliest herding in the eastern Sahara...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sandra Viskanta Khokhriakova. Alexandre Tokovinine. Dmitri Beliaev. Sandra Balanzario.

This is an abstract from the "New Light on Dzibanché and on the Rise of the Snake Kingdom’s Hegemony in the Maya Lowlands" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper presents some preliminary results of the first field season of 3D documentation of buildings, monuments, and portable artifacts from the archaeological site of Dzibanché in Quintana Roo, Mexico. Four building facades, 20 stairway blocks, nine miscellaneous sculpture fragments, and six...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Daniela Triadan.

This is an abstract from the "Preclassic Maya Social Transformations along the Usumacinta: Views from Ceibal and Aguada Fénix" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The analysis of new LiDAR data has revealed many previously unknown early Middle Preclassic sites in the Middle Usumacinta drainage. The sites are monumental in their extensions and consist of a large rectangular feature or platform oriented slightly east of north, delineated by low mounds...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mara Horowitz.

The small (1 hectare) site of Phlamoudhi-Vounari was built in Late Cypriot IA:1 and abandoned early in Late Cypriot IIA, a lifespan of c. 200 years. This paper presents a 3D model and spatial analysis suggesting that the site functioned as a stage during community gatherings (and greeting visitors). Vounari’s plan is unique on Cyprus: a likely man-made, eight-meter-high mound topped with a sequence of superimposed structures. Initially built with open access to the summit from the higher south...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Franco Rossi. Heather Hurst.

This is an abstract from the "Place-Making in Indigenous Mesoamerican Communities Past and Present" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In 2010, archaeologists of the San Bartolo-Xultun Project began investigations of an acropolis complex located at the northern limit of the urban center of Xultun, designated "Los Arboles." The penultimate phase of the complex, dating to the Early Classic period (likely fifth century AD), included extensive preserved...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Justin Bracken.

A third season of fieldwork at the fortified site of Muralla de León has expanded the scope of coverage for the project by mapping and excavating nearby hilltop occupations on the shores of Lake Macanché. The work serves to contextualize the space contained by the site’s enceinte, a physical barrier that serves also as a boundary feature. Earlier investigations into the site interior and the ramparts of the enceinte itself begged for a comparative data set, as the significance of a barrier...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mary Jane Acuña. Carlos Chiriboga. Varinia Matute. Francisco Castañeda.

The site of El Tintal, located in northern Petén, Guatemala, provides early evidence of monumental construction, initiating with the large-scale transformation of the landscape in preparation for the site’s ceremonial core, followed by construction programs consisting of pyramids, elevated causeways, and a diversity of hydraulic features. Recent investigations at El Tintal have shed light on its Preclassic settlement, organized around what we propose was an ancient lagoon which settlers...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rebecca Hunt. Tiffany Raymond. Anna Patchen. Sarah Gilleland. Matthew Sanger.

Mound A is the largest earthen construction at Poverty Point and the second largest mound in North America. Limited excavations on the mound have documented the construction history of the deposit, but have failed to find evidence of how the mound was used. Recent geophysical surveys (including resistivity, ground penetrating radar, and magnetometry) reveal specialized use areas – including prepared floors that we interpret as dance and presentation platforms. The discovery of these platforms...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Thomas Jamison. David Mixter.

Monumental architecture and public spaces provide primary contexts for community ritual and social action. The process of construction of public architecture involves community cooperation and collective action, with the latter contributing to significant changes in the form and use of structures through time. The public architecture of Actuncan developed from the Preclassic period to constitute a nearly complete set of architectural forms devoted to ritual, administrative and community...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Zoe Rawski.

The site of Early Xunantunich in Belize provides us with a rare opportunity to conduct large scale investigations of Preclassic architecture due to its lack of Classic Period overburden. Since 2008, ongoing excavations at the site have yielded a wealth of information regarding Preclassic activities in the area. However, recent investigations of a monumental flat-topped platform at the site have illuminated issues with the ways in which we describe and classify these early structures. In this...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Robert DiNapoli. Carl P. Lipo. Timothy De Smet. Diana Greenlee.

This is an abstract from the "Constructing Chronologies I: Stratification and Correlation" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The culture history of southeastern North America is characterized by several episodes of monumental mound building, particularly during the Woodland and Mississippian periods. Some of the earliest manifestations of mound construction occur in the Middle and Late Archaic periods of the Lower Mississippi River Valley. The Late...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nathan Lawres.

The Belle Glade monumental landscape exhibits a high level of monumentality, with architectural features ranging from large circular ditches to massive geometric arrays of earthen architecture. However, this unique architecture has seen few archaeological interpretations. Those that have been put forth have largely emphasized economic explanations, many of which have been refuted with the acquisition of new archaeological data. Additionally, recent ecological studies show that the physical...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Bret Ruby. Friedrich Lueth. Rainer Komp. Jarrod Burks. Timothy Darvill.

Hopewell Culture National Historical Park preserves six monumental mound and earthwork complexes in south-central Ohio. Archaeological attention in the 19th and 20th centuries remained narrowly focused on mounds and mortuary contexts, ignoring the vast spaces between the monuments. At the same time, agricultural plowing steadily eroded the above-grade features. Recently, the National Park Service forged an international partnership to conduct high-resolution, landscape-scale geomagnetic surveys...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elisabeth Hildebrand. Katherine Grillo. Anneke Janzen. Susan Pfeiffer. Elizabeth Sawchuk.

In eastern Africa, herding was the earliest form of food production, supplanting fishing-hunting-gathering around Lake Turkana (northwest Kenya) ca. 5000-4000 BP. Fueled by the dramatic recession of Lake Turkana 5300-3900 BP, which made fishing less predictable and exposed vast plains of rich pasture near the lake, early herding probably involved both in-migration of pastoralists and adoption of livestock by local fishers. As herding took hold a mortuary tradition developed, with megalithic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gavin Davies.

This is an abstract from the "Art, Archaeology, and Science: Investigations in the Guatemala Highlands" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ruler stelae are a well known class of monument in the Southern Maya region but have so far been recovered only from only the largest sites, such as Kaminaljuyu, Takalik Abaj, and Chocola, all of which are considered to have been regional capitals. The recovery of a basal fragment of one of these monuments near the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only William Frazer. James Bourke. Timothy de Smet. Alex Nikulin.

Poverty Point is a UNESCO World Heritage Site known for its monumental earthworks. The largest and most significant feature on the site, Mound A, is over 21 meters high and 200 meters long. Currently, it is believed to have been built in three months at most. This supports the idea that there was a central leader directing its construction, a more socio-politically complex society than previous hunter-gatherer populations in North America. Evidence of stratigraphic layering, however, is an...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jesse Stephen.

Monumental architecture is often theorized as a costly signal in prehistoric complex societies, including Oceania in general and Hawaiʻi in specific. In this paper I explore sensory exploitation theory, which suggests that the costliness of monumentality may have contributed to social stratification and the multifaceted function of religion through specific sensory sensitivities. Puʻukoholā heiau, a large temple on the Big Island of Hawaiʻi with notable archaeological, historic, and contemporary...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Timothy Everhart.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Woodland societies of the Central Scioto River Valley in Ohio, most notably the Hopewell, have garnered much archaeological distinction from two elements of their ceremonialism: the construction of large, sometimes geometric ditch and embankment enclosures and the production of ornate art, often of exotic materials, utilized in funerary practices. It has...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Asa Randall. Kenneth Sassaman.

All societies face contradictions between the perception of how the world was in the past or should be in the future, and the material realities of the present. Changing social and ecological contexts are catalysts for intervention by communities hoping to restore or assert structure during turbulent times. Terraforming is one mode of intervention in which large-scale modifications to land reference ancient times, events, and persons to create new opportunities for the future. At the landscape...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mark Collard. Brea McCauley. Chris Carleton. André Costopoulos.

The construction of shrines, tombs, and other monuments is one of the most puzzling human behaviors from an evolutionary perspective. Building monuments is costly in terms of time and energy, and yet it is difficult to see how it contributes to survival and reproduction. In the late 1980s, Dunnell argued that monument building and other apparently wasteful behaviors are in fact adaptive in environments that are characterized by severe and/or unpredictable perturbations. Such behaviors are...