Monumentality (Other Keyword)
26-50 (111 Records)
This is an abstract from the "Humble Houses to Magnificent Monuments: Papers in Honor of Jerry D. Moore" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A group of people came together in the early third millennium BCE to construct a large circular plaza bounded by concentric walls of free-standing megaliths. This Late Archaic period, 18 m diameter plaza is located near the summit of the site of Callacpuma in the Cajamarca Basin and has been the subject of mapping...
Experiencing Yaxhom: Materiality, Memory, and Monumentality in the Puuc Hills of Yucatan (2016)
Research conducted at the ancient Maya site of Yaxhom has identified very early monumental architecture next to one of the most fertile tracts in the Puuc region of northern Yucatan. A third field season, reported on here, carried out further mapping and testing of the urban center to determine the extent of accompanying Formative architecture. We wished to test whether the platform served to mark place for a population with minimal investment in residential architecture or whether it formed...
Exploring Bronze Age Mongolian Monuments with Geophysical Methodologies (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. For mobile pastoralists, monuments are places of permanence and stability in a landscape inhabited and perceived through movement. It is within these monumental spaces that dispersed peoples gather as a community, and through secular and ritual activities, organize and reaffirm social bonds and institutions, and maintain...
Exploring the Pre-Classic Roots of Hohokam Platform Mounds: New Evidence from La Plaza (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. Recent archaeological and historical investigations at the Hohokam site of La Plaza revealed robust evidence that a platform mound once stood in the north part of Arizona State University’s Tempe campus. Recently obtained archaeological evidence suggests that the mound was built during the middle-late Sedentary period (ca....
Firefly Synchronicity in Platform Mound Building by Indigenous Peoples of the Florida Peninsula, USA (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Although archaeologists commonly situate the value of our field in its capacity to identify broad-scale patterning in human societies over the long term, critiques of the essentialism and linearity of social evolution led many to abandon this goal in favor of shorter-term, local histories. Drawing from calls for a “process archaeology” that recognizes...
From Building to Connecting: Shifting Portraits of Complexity in Ancient Aksumite Monument Construction (50–400 AD) (2018)
This paper looks at how network theory and materiality may challenge progressive evolutionary models of complexity. Archaeologists working on the African continent have long argued against neoevolutionary models of complexity, advocating instead for understandings that promote dynamism and fluidity. However, the spectre of neoevolution still claims the public imagination: bigger still seems to be better even if we agree it really shouldn’t be. This paper aids in complicating these views by...
Gathering Relations in an Aqueous World: Monumentality, Ontology, and the Belle Glade Landscape (2016)
Recent research on Pre-Contact South Florida has reinforced the notion that the peoples dwelling in the region inhabited a past material world much different from our own and from neighboring areas. In particular, the hydrologic characteristics of a subtropical landscape centered on the Lake Okeechobee basin are one of the central features of both the epistemology and ontology reflected in the earliest monumental architecture in the region. Yet these worldviews and worlds were not static...
Geochemical Soil Analysis of Sequential Public and Private Plaster Floor Surfaces from the Maya Site of Holtun (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Holtun: Investigations at a Preclassic Maya Center" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this paper we present the results of an exploratory program aimed at providing multi-component soil sampling and analysis of plaster floor surfaces at the Maya site of Holtun, Guatemala. Our research sampled three different plaza settings at the site: the monumental E-Group plaza, an elite residential patio adjacent to the E-Group...
Geospatial Analysis of Tumuli in the North Central Anatolian Plateau (2018)
The tumulus fields – landscapes heavily modified by monumental burial mounds – of Central Anatolia provide an opening to investigate how the tumuli reflect and create places of collective memory, territorial identity, and the social order. This project takes the Iron Age tumuli of the Kanak Su Basin in Yozgat, Turkey as a case study and uses a GIS approach based on available evidence: their location from archaeological surveys, and a small number of excavated mounds. This paper investigates the...
How Monumental Architecture Directs Movement: Defensive and Hydrological Features at Muralla de León (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Manifesting Movement Materially: Broadening the Mesoamerican View" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Tracking patterns of everyday movement by individuals within a local population offers deep insight into the spatialized social structure of the group, providing information such as who interacts with whom, which areas are public and which are private, and the tightness or openness of different social circles. Like most...
Identifying the First Public and Domestic Constructions at Pacbitun, Belize (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Investigations in Plazas A and B of the site core at Pacbitun indicate that initial occupation began in the early Middle Preclassic period (900–600 BC). At this time, a small agricultural community was established in Plaza B beginning with a few domestic structures built just above bedrock. These early domiciles would also function as workshops for the...
Identity, Place, and Public Memory: A Linguistic Analysis of American Civil War Monuments at the Gettysburg Battlefield (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The location of the American Civil War Battle of Gettysburg, now preserved at the Gettysburg National Military Park (GNMP), receives thousands of visitors every year. Visitors to the battlefield interact with over 1,000 monuments across the landscape that both commemorate the actions that took place and memorialize the participants in those actions. Presented...
In the Realm of Three Hills: Civic-Religious Architecture at Llano Grande, Copan, during the Late Classic Period (ca. AD 650–850) (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Mountains, Rain, and Techniques of Governance in Mesoamerica" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Copan Valley, located in western Honduras, has been inhabited by permanent communities since the Early Formative period (ca. 1400 BC). These early communities developed a lifestyle based on milpa agriculture, which continues today with the Ch'ortí Maya, the linguistic group that is the descendants of the ancient Copanecos....
Inca Stone Sources, Quarrying, and Transport (2019)
This is an abstract from the "How Did the Inca Construct Cuzco?" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Stone was fundamental to building Cuzco and there was significant variability in the sources and sizes of stones employed. To understand the history of construction, we must take into account relationships with the people and resources of the wider region, which impacted where the stones originated and how they were worked, transported, and used....
Initial Period Friezes and Architecture at Taukachi-Konkan, Casma Valley, Peru (2018)
Recent excavations at a number of intermediate-sized mounds of the Initial Period (2100-1000 B.C.) site of Taukachi-Konkán in the Casma Valley of Peru have uncovered surprising new evidence of clay friezes and architectural forms previously unknown for the Initial Period along the coast of Peru. One U-shaped mound complex has an associated sunken rectangular plaza that contains distinct friezes on all four of its sides. The content of the friezes includes two sea lions, a large feline and two...
Investigación con sensores remotos en la colina piramidal de Tulcán, Popayán, Colombia (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. El Morro Tulcán es una colina de forma piramidal de 5 ha, modificada antrópicamente, que representa la estructura monumental prehispánica más grande del suroccidente colombiano. Las excavaciones arqueológicas realizadas hace 50 años en el sitio evidenciaron que se dispusieron centenares de adobes y rellenos de tierra de manera ordenada en un área mayor a 2...
Kaillachuro: The Emergence of Burial Mounds in an Egalitarian Community of the Titicaca Basin, South-Central Andes, 5.0 Ka (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The extent to which emergent complexity involved hierarchical organization in small-scale societies remains an unresolved anthropological question. The research presented here examines inequality among individuals buried some 5,000 years ago at the Kaillachuro burial mound site in the southwestern Lake Titicaca basin, Peru. This is the earliest known mound...
Killing Time, Becoming Inca: Subject Creation and Monument Construction in Ancient Cuzco (2015)
The Incas built the largest indigenous empire in the Americas, and though they lacked a written history, they were keen to tell Spanish scribes how they assembled their domain. Inca nobles explained that their ancestors vanquished anyone who dared challenge Inca claims to authority. Like the boasts of other conquerors, these stories cast only particular people as the subjects of history and the cultivators of "civilization." But they also conceal another side of Inca history: For, it was...
The Late Prehistory of Ecuador from Above and Below: Remote Sensing in the Northern Highlands (2018)
Remote sensing, including both low level aerial photography and subsurface geophysical methods, has become an increasingly key element in archaeological fieldwork over the last few decades. During that time, our team has used various techniques to accurately map late prehistoric Ecuadorian sites and to search for buried features. In the last two years we have used drone aerial photography, ground penetrating radar, and magnetometry to aid in investigations at the monumental site of Cochasquí....
Layout, Construction, and Rebuilding of Landscape Features at Poverty Point World Heritage Site (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Questions persist about the layout and building sequence of Poverty Point’s landscape features, and the planning and rapidity of overall site construction. A research program using geophysics, stratigraphic coring, lidar, and targeted excavation that began in 2006 continues to yield new data and interpretations about the ridges, timber circles, plaza, and...
Macro and Micro Floor Stratigraphy from Poverty Point Ridge 2 Northwest (2024)
This is an abstract from the "*SE Not Your Father’s Poverty Point: Rewriting Old Narratives through New Research" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Poverty Point’s concentric ridges have long been assumed to be residential areas despite an absence of archaeological evidence for houses. In 1991, a field school excavation was initiated based on a core that suggested a possible clay floor buried ~60 cm below the surface. Sixteen 2 × 2 units were opened,...
Magnetometry Survey at the Mann Site: A Rich New Dataset on Hopewell Ceremonialism (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. The Mann site in southwest Indiana is one of the largest Hopewell ceremonial centers in the Midwest and also one of the least studied. The site, which was occupied between A.D. 200 and 500, consists of flat-topped, conical, and geometric earthworks, similar to those from Hopewell complexes in Ohio and elsewhere. The most...
Mapping from the Heavens: UAV(Drone) Data Collection at Monte Albán, Oaxaca, Mexico (2018)
The use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) in archaeology has increased rapidly in recent years as drones have become more affordable and easy to use. Accessible commercial grade equipment can quickly capture data to produce maps and 3D models of high accuracy and precision. During the Summer of 2017, the Proyecto Geofísico de Monte Albán (PGMA) integrated the use of a UAV technology into their geophysical survey project at the UNESCO world heritage site of Monte Albán located in Oaxaca, Mexico....
Maya Monumental Energetics (2016)
Inspired by the important development of architectural energetics methodologies in Maya studies, I explore current research concerning monumental construction practices and labor at the ancient Maya site of Xunantunich, Belize. I discuss the foundational energetics principles applied to the major acropolis of Xunantunich, known as the Castillo, and highlight how virtual reconstruction plays a role in developing such energetics studies. Most importantly, I discuss how the scale of monumentality...
Midden among the mounds: An Ongoing Study of Faunal Remains from a Platform Mound and Adjacent Midden at the Garden Patch Site (8DI4) (2016)
This paper presents the faunal composition of a platform mound and adjacent village midden as a means of understanding subsistence, feasting, and ceremony at the pre-Columbian Garden Patch site, a Middle Woodland (ca. AD 100 to 500) multi-mound center located on the northwest gulf coast of Florida. The vertebrate faunal remains from the dense midden of Area X are compared to those of adjacent Mound II, a platform mound constructed of alternating lenses of shell midden and sand. The results of...