Monumentality (Other Keyword)

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 Lisa Trever. Hugo Ikehara Tsukayama. Jessica Ortiz Zevallos. Michele Koons. J. Antonio Ochatoma Cabrera.

This is an abstract from the "Paisajes Arqueológicos de Pañamarca: Findings from the 2018–2023 Field Seasons" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Although it is now best known for earthen architecture bearing iconic wall paintings in late Moche style (ca. 600–850 CE), Pañamarca was a monumental center of great importance in the lower Nepeña Valley of north-coastal Peru from at least 150 BCE through the 1400s CE. In this paper, we present the evidence...

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 Marie Kolbenstetter.

This is an abstract from the "The Problem of the Monument: Widening Perspectives on Monumentality in the Archaeology of the Isthmo-Colombian Area" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Grooved boulders seem to be an archaeological feature unique to El Tigre island in Honduras. Distributed around the small island, they are known locally as piedras rayadas, and feature in local oral histories. As durable traces, their meaning is everchanging, yet...

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 Diana Greenlee. Rinita Dalan. Michael Hargrave. R. Berle Clay. Arne Anderson Stamnes.

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. Research at Cahokia, Raffman, and other sites has shown the folly of assuming that plazas are unaltered because they are level and dwarfed by the topography of surrounding earthworks. Their unassuming topography can conceal evidence of significant anthropogenic alterations, past activities, and buried...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Corinne Watts.

This is an abstract from the "Reinvent, Reclaim, Redefine: Considerations of "Reuse" in Archaeological Contexts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The co-opting of cultural heritage is one of the ways that archaeological materials are “reused.” This process references and reinforces power structures related to cultural identity through the control of archaeological material, narratives, and meanings. In some situations, the process includes the...

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 Suzanne Baker.

This is an abstract from the "The Problem of the Monument: Widening Perspectives on Monumentality in the Archaeology of the Isthmo-Colombian Area" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ometepe is the largest island in Lake Coçibolca (Lake Nicaragua), itself the largest body of freshwater between Lake Titicapa in South America and the Great Lakes of North America. Its topography is unique, composed of two volcanoes—one active (Concepción) and one ancient...

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 Matt Colvin.

This is an abstract from the "*SE Hope for the Future: A Message of Resiliency from Archaeological Sites in South Florida" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Within the southern Florida interior, Fort Center is most widely known for its monumental architecture and 2,000-plus years of occupation within a dynamic, and at times unpredictable, landscape. In this paper I discuss how peoples’ early investment in communal architecture played a role in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ron Adams.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Stone remains a prominent feature of the natural and cultural landscape of Tana Toraja, Indonesia, where outcropping basalt and limestone karst formations create a dramatic backdrop. In this context, the manipulation of stone is an important aspect of ancient cultural traditions that persist to the present day, but which has received relatively little...

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...