Monumentality (Other Keyword)
101-111 (111 Records)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Globally, the earliest cultural ecumene are associated with monumental centers that spurred greater local and interregional interaction. Atimpampa, located in the Arequipa region of Peru, is one such monumental center that has remained largely unstudied. This poster presents the preliminary results of our 2020 archaeological survey at Antimpampa, which...
Terraforming a Middle Ground in Ancient Florida (2016)
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...
Testing Dunnell’s Waste Explanation for Monument Building with an Agent-Based Model (2018)
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...
Trenches, Embankments, and Palisades: Terraforming Landscapes for Defensive Fortifications in Coast Salish Territory (2016)
The Coast Salish hunter-gatherer fishers of the Northwest Coast built substantial defenses, involving the labor of multiple households and entire villages. These fortifications, perched upon high bluff promontories or at the points of narrow coastal sandspit ridges, often involved deep trenches and steep embankments that were enclosed by tall palisades of cedar planks. Such constructions would have dominated the viewshed of their seascape. In this presentation, I’ll highlight the degree of...
Unearthing the Past at Shiloh Mound, Tennessee: Collaborative Insights from Partnering with David G. Anderson (2024)
This is an abstract from the "*SE Big Data and Bigger Questions: Papers in Honor of David G. Anderson" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Shiloh Mound site in Tennessee is a rare example of a protected Native American mound group. This paper presents the outcomes of a pioneering archaeological expedition co-led by David G. Anderson, shedding light on the lifeways of ancient inhabitants through meticulous excavation and interdisciplinary analysis....
Virtual Reality and Archaeological Practice (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Virtual reality (VR) is a tool that offers an opportunity to approach archaeological analyses and communications through a different lens. VR provides a platform where data can be continuously updated and modified as is becomes available as well as adding an element of interactivity. VR allows the user to engage with a simulated environment, walk around,...
What Happened on Monte Albán’s Main Plaza? Insights from a Socio-Spatial-Sensory Analysis (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Despite increasing scholarly interest in the role of plazas in prehispanic Mesoamerica, we still have a relatively incomplete understanding of what actually occurred in such places. In this paper, we address this vexing question for the Main Plaza at Monte Albán in Oaxaca, Mexico. Our study draws on data from recent fieldwork on the Main Plaza, including...
What We Know and What We Wished We Knew about Hohokam Platform Mounds (2019)
This is an abstract from the "WHY PLATFORM MOUNDS? PART 1: MOUND DEVELOPMENT AND CASE STUDIES" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In January 1888, Frank Hamilton Cushing rode his horse atop the Hohokam platform mound at Los Hornos in the lower Salt River valley, and took note of numerous other mounds that dotted the valley’s landscape. The monuments’ spacing led Cushing to conceive of the valley-wide settlement as an integrated network for...
Why Did Nomadic Dynasties Build Walls? (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Steppe by Steppe: Advances in the Archaeology of Eastern Eurasia" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. We report on the work done in Eastern Mongolia on walls, linear barriers contracted between the tenth and thirteenth centuries AD. Our project includes remote sensing, surveys, and excavations.
Woodhenges in Northwest Europe (2019)
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. Circles, variously of wood and stone, are a major feature of the ceremonial centres dating to the third and early second millennia BC in northwest Europe. Some, such as Stonehenge, are very well known and complicated in their design and layout. Many others are more modest in scale and form. Geophysical surveys and...
Woodland Systematics and Monumentality: A Preliminary Discussion of the Re-discovery of the Caldwell Mound (2017)
The Caldwell Mound was a prehistoric conical mound located in the central Scioto River Valley, in modern-day Ross County, Ohio. Excavated by prominent amateur archaeologist, Donald McBeth in 1942, the Caldwell mound revealed a unique, if detailed funerary complex. Yet, these results remained largely unpublished. Exhibiting characteristics historically considered "Adena" and "Hopewell", the Caldwell mound presents either a call to update local cultural systematics or adds data speaking to a...