Collapse (Other Keyword)
51-75 (84 Records)
Joe Ball’s research, his ceramic studies, his insistence on material culture as basis for work, and his honesty in critique of poorly grounded interpretation together provide a standard of building culture-history on solid ceramic studies, chronology, and material culture analyses. Many recent interpretations of Classic Maya society have not met that standard. Here we aspire to his bottom-up, material culture approach to interpretation in recent collaborative research in the western Peten and...
Politicized Use of the Spaces outside of Caves during the Terminal Classic Maya Collapse (2017)
This paper investigates the use of caves as performance spaces for water and agriculturally focused rituals during the Maya Late Classic period (~ A.D. 750-900) and the events of the 'collapse'. Although the ‘collapse’ of the social, economic, and political systems during this period has been the subject of much study, the majority of research has focused on the environmental factors with little consensus as to how rulers attempted to maintain order, social solidarity, and political power...
Post-Collapse Change and Continuity in Bolivia’s Desaguadero Valley (2015)
There is often a discontinuity between studies of ‘collapse’ and studies of post-collapse periods. This can lead to the periods following collapse being defined by a "lack" of what came before. In the southern Titicaca basin, for example, the period following the collapse of the Tiwanaku state has been defined by a lack of monumental construction, raised fields, large-scale feasting events, or Tiwanaku-style iconography. Nevertheless, recent explorations have demonstrated that while "collapse"...
"Problematic Deposits" at Chan Chich, Belize (2018)
The Chan Chich Archaeological Project has documented two types of terminal, above floor "problematic" artifact deposits in a number of different locations and contexts at the site of Chan Chich, Belize. The first type comprises light scatters of "exotic" ceramics and other artifacts on the steps to range buildings in epicentral courtyards. The second type is a dense artifact deposit in an ashy matrix at the base of a platform face in a hilltop, elite courtyard. Compositionally, the second type...
Processes of Collapse, Resilience, and Reorganization at El Infiernito, Chiapas (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Discussions of political collapse in archaeology have shifted recently to approaches that incorporate the adaptive cycles of resilience and reorganization that highlight the continuity of certain cultural practices, belief systems, and worldviews alongside the disintegration of political systems. This approach has garnered support especially in the Maya area...
A Re-Evaluation of Moundville's Collapse (2018)
The disruption of social traditions in ancient societies is often described as the collapse of complexity, but persisting or resilient practices are often ignored, limiting archaeological interpretations of social continuity and change. This paper addresses these historical processes during the terminal occupation of Moundville, a multiple mound Mississippian civic-ceremonial complex occupied from A.D. 1200-1550 and located in west-central Alabama. The collapse of ancient complex societies has...
Reconsidering the Late Woodland: A Critical Reassessment through Decolonizing Approaches (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Late Woodland period in eastern North America has traditionally been conceptualized as a cultural hiatus between the region’s Hopewell and Mississippian traditions. As a drastic (though not complete) reduction in the practices of monumental architecture and art produced with nonlocal materials occurred during this time, the end of the preceding Hopewell...
Reconsidering the Terminal Classic in the Northern Lowlands – A Boom or the Start of a Bust? (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. After many sites in the Southern Maya Lowlands were abandoned during the major societal transformation known as the “Maya Collapse,” settlements in the North grew markedly in size. In the Cochuah region of the Yucatan peninsula, and elsewhere, some of the largest architecture ever built was constructed. More residences than had been seen before, or since,...
Reevaluating Vijayanagara Imperial Collapse (2015)
This paper reexamines notions of imperial collapse by looking at recent archaeological work at the eponymous capital of the Vijayanagara Empire and at settlements of one of its subordinate regional polities. The Vijayanagara Empire is well-known archaeologically through work at its primary capital at modern day Hampi, Karnataka, India, which is today recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The former primary capital city was intensively occupied until just after the empire suffered a serious...
Rejection and Reinvention: a diachronic perspective on ritual and collapse in the south central Andes (2017)
Scholarship on Tiwanaku (AD 600-1000) emphasizes the ceremonial nature of its capital city and the role of ritual practice in incorporating diverse groups as the state’s influence expanded across the south central Andes. Although debate continues about its cause, recent research indicates that the Tiwanaku state’s political collapse played out over several centuries. In this paper, I draw on data spanning that period of fragmentation to take a diachronic perspective on the ways in which ritual,...
Resilience, Incursion, Incorporation: A Multi-Scalar Approach to the Temporality of Collapse in the South-Central Andes (2016)
Cross-cultural literature highlights the importance of differentiating between political, societal, and ‘cultural’ collapse. Focusing largely on the short-term aftermath of collapse, this scholarship demonstrates that even in the clearest examples of political fragmentation, considerable stability in other components of past societies is often archaeologically visible. Less attention has been paid to longer-term impacts and responses. Taking the disintegration of the Tiwanaku state in the south...
Return to Hacienda Metepec: Exploring Continuity and Change at Teotihuacan (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Central Mexico after Teotihuacan: Everyday Life and the (Re)Making of Epiclassic Communities" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent archaeological research in central Mexico has examined the transformations of prehispanic communities during the Epiclassic period (AD 550–850) from the perspective of Teotihuacan’s neighboring settlements and peripheral regions. Less attention, however, has been given to the concomitant...
Revisiting Tula, Hidalgo Epiclassic Ceramics: Progress and Recent NAA Results (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Significant progress has been made in the description and definition of typological and compositional assemblages of Tula, Hidalgo regional ceramics during the Epiclassic period of the Central Highlands. Neutron Activation Analysis conducted at the Archaeometry Laboratory and the Research Reactor Center at the University of Missouri (MURR) now includes...
Rhythms of Settlement Aggregation and Disintegration in Iron Age Bavaria (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Ephemeral Aggregated Settlements: Fluidity, Failure or Resilience?" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In many parts of Temperate Europe, the first aggregated and fortified urban settlements developed in the Early Iron Age. However, many of these settlements disappeared after a few generations. After a period of decentralization lasting at least two centuries, another episode of settlement aggregation took place in...
Ritual Cycles and Organizational Plasticity in the Post-collapse Colla Society of Southern Peru (A.D. 1000-1450) (2016)
As Wengrow and Graeber (2015) recently pointed out, since the 1960s anthropologists have focused on organization types—bands, tribes, chiefdoms, states and the like—that remain relatively stable over long periods of time. By contrast, this paper considers evidence from the post-collapse Colla polity of southern Peru to understand how negative perceptions of centralized authority that culminated in the collapse of the Tiwanaku state (c. A.D. 1000) both demanded, and provided the impetus for, the...
Scrutinizing Theories of Maya Collapse with the CHAAHK Spatial Simulation Model (2018)
The Classic Maya collapse remains as both relevant and controversial a topic as ever. For over a century, dozens of researchers have proposed different causes that may have driven this complex process. The last few decades have witnessed the academic community’s opinion converge on the notion that many different social and environmental factors, operating at likewise diverse scales, somehow contributed to a temporally gradual and spatially heterogeneous disruption of the demographic, political,...
Second-Hand Spaces: abandonment and reoccupation during the final stages of a Tiwanaku provincial temple (Omo M10A) (2015)
The Tiwanaku colonies in Moquegua, Peru represent some of the best preserved archaeological remains left by this south central Andean polity. This has led to a detailed understanding of daily life and ceremonial practices of these Tiwanaku colonists. However, our understanding of how these lifestyles and practices were transformed during and after the disintegration the highland core is still relatively limited. This paper will take a site-specific approach to explore this enigmatic period of...
The Social Transformation of the Terminal Classic Maya to Postclassic Maya in Northern Belize (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Terminal Classic (AD 800-1000) and Postclassic (AD 1000-1500) periods of Maya civilization in northern Belize were times of significant change and social transformation. Changes and developments during the Terminal Class are visible archaeological at several northern Belizean communities including Colha, Lamanai, and La Milpa. We evaluate changes at...
Stephen Williams and The Vacant Quarter Phenomenon (2018)
Stephen Williams proposed the idea of a Vacant Quarter based on the abandonment of numerous Mississippian polities throughout much of the Midsouth and Midwest. The unprecedented, large-scale depopulation of an approximately 130,000 square kilometer area has been linked with population movements as well as interpolity conflict. By taking a dendroclimatological approach we evaluate the role of climate change in this process, while also being cognizant of social processes. We postulate a staggered...
The Struggle Was Real: The End of the Archaic and the Onset of the Intermediate Indian Period in Eastern Subarctic North America (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The transition between the end of the Archaic and the Intermediate Indian Period in the Eastern Subarctic of North America was marked by significant changes in just about all dimensions of Amerindian life—technology, raw material use, exchange networks, social organization, architecture, burial customs, settlement patterns, and subsistence strategies. These...
Surviving the Maya Collapse: A View from Moxviquil, Chiapas, Mexico (2016)
Although the famous "Maya collapse" in the 9th century A.D. destabilized many powerful Southern Lowland Maya Late Classic kingdoms, the small polities of highland Chiapas not only survived, but thrived. Excavations in the Central Highlands of Chiapas suggest that the small cities and towns in this region maintained their roles as political centers throughout the Late Classic-Early Postclassic period transition. Recent excavations at Moxviquil provide evidence for the economic and social...
A Tale of Two Cities: The Role of Cultural Factors in Determining Resilience to Climate Change (2016)
In recent decades, there has been an increasing interest at both the scholarly and public level in the relationship between social transformation and climate change in the past, and especially in the potential role of climate change as a cause of societal collapse. However, this focus has also raised some concerns that too much emphasis is being placed upon environmental factors in some archaeological collapse models, and consequently that important social factors are not being adequately taken...
Talking about Epiclassic at Teotihuacan: the urban question (2015)
The collapse of Teotihuacan has traditionally marked the passage of the Classic to Epiclassic period in central Mexico.However, concepts like Epiclassic or collapse, they have different consequences if we analyze the urban center of the city or the Teotihuacan territory. In this paper , we focus on the collapse of the urban center of Teotihuacan analyzing the variability of the archaeological record that shows a very complex social process. SAA 2015 abstracts made available in tDAR courtesy of...
Teotihuacan and Its Interregional Interactions during the Epiclassic Period: New Data from the Suburban Neighborhood of Hacienda Metepec (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Interactions during the Epiclassic and Early Postclassic (AD 650–1100) in the Central Highlands: New Insights from Material and Visual Culture" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Interregional relations are widely documented for Classic period Teotihuacan (AD 1–600), where a rich and extensive network of goods, people, and ideas connected the ancient city with the rest of Mesoamerica. After its political collapse at about...
Terminal Deposits and Terminal Classic Collapse: An Analysis of the Proportional Distribution of Artifacts from Terminal Deposition Events at the Site of Baking Pot, Belize (2018)
Throughout the Maya Lowlands, archaeologists have identified Terminal Classic deposits associated with the final activities in ceremonial and domestic spaces. These features include concentrations of cultural material deposited in the corners of plazas and courtyards. At the site of Baking Pot, Belize, the Belize Valley Archaeological Reconnaissance (BVAR) project has identified several of these terminal deposits. This presentation will shed light on the types of artifacts that were deposited...