Caves and Rockshelters (Other Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Aubrey Roemer.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Since the rediscovery and canonization of Paleolithic and precontact cave art, researchers have grappled with different ways to document and reproduce sites containing ancient artwork. Early methods utilized hand drawing in situ and, soon after, cave art reproduction included film photography. Later, digital photography became the primary mode of capturing...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christina Iglesias. Ann Scott.

This is an abstract from the "Multidisciplinary Approaches to the Subterranean" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Twenty years ago, Ann Scott presented "The Historical Context of the Founding of Maya Cave Archaeology" at the SAA meetings in Montreal documenting the history of Maya cave archaeology from the 1970s to its emergence as a self-conscious field in 1997. It is fitting, therefore, that this presentation considers the expansion the field has...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Bradley Russell. Stanley Serafin. Eunice Uc Gonzalez. Carlos Peraza Lope.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. With support from The National Geographic Society and The Waitt Foundation, the Mayapán Taboo Cenote Project conducted investigations at Cenote Sac Uayum, a sacred, water-bearing sinkhole located at the Postclassic Maya political capital of Mayapán, Yucatán, Mexico (AD 1150-1450). The work brought together an international collaboration of researchers from the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Neil E. Kohanski.

This is an abstract from the "Multidisciplinary Approaches to the Subterranean" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper seeks to explore the pivotal role of ethnographic analogy in archaeological research, with a focus on the Maya ritual within subterranean spaces. While ethnographic analogy remains indispensable to the archaeological enterprise, it has faced significant resistance within the archaeological community. This presentation aims to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joy Tatem.

This is an abstract from the "The Archaeology of Eagle Nest Canyon, Texas: Papers in Honor of Jack and Wilmuth Skiles" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The focus of this research was to analyze potential plant-processing chipped stone tools from several rockshelter and terrace sites in Eagle Nest Canyon within the Lower Pecos Canyonlands of southwest Texas, excavated by Texas State University from 2013 to 2017. The chipped stone tool assemblages’...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Richard Nicolas.

Caves are natural spaces, but like other natural settings, they can be perceived by people through highly variable cultural lenses. Caves are not generally used as utilitarian spaces, but are more often sacred spaces where rituals are performed. The material record of these subterranean features can provide insights for how past peoples connected to the symbolic landscapes of caves, thus affording opportunities to assess behaviors. Research on the ritual uses of caves is fairly new in the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Agni Prijatelj.

Caves are regularly portrayed as a blank stage upon which the social – including ritual activity – is enacted. This paper, however, takes the opposite approach: in discussing a number of selected Antique and Medieval ritual cave sites in Slovenia that are associated with Roman, Christian and Slavic religious systems, it demonstrates the vibrant, hybrid, participant and continuously-changing nature of underground places in which multiple symmetric and fluid connections exist between people,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Eugenia Robinson. Marlen Garnica. Sorayya Carr.

This is an abstract from the "Interdisciplinary Approaches to Rock Art Documentation, Research, and Analysis" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. La Casa de las Golondrinas is a Mesoamerican sacred rock art and pilgrimage site located in the southern end of the Antigua Valley in the central highlands of Guatemala near water sources and routes of travel. Recently, mapping efforts have found that the natural site, 500 m long, was culturally structured...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lauren Lippiello.

Shared iconography and similar functionality associated with dated depictions of Predynastic watercraft and terrestrial shrines identify watercraft as the earliest manifestation of manufactured sacred space in Egypt. The resulting Mobile Sacred Space Paradigm describes watercraft as ritual objects (liminal negotiators) empowered to move through and, thereby, connect three ecologically distinctive landscapes as early as the Naqada IIB Period (and possibly Naqada IC). Results indicate that...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gerardo Gutiérrez. Mary E. Pye.

In this paper, we address the role of leaders and their communities during the performance of ceremonies associated with rain petition in a network of caves located in the Mixtec-Tlapanec-Nahua region of Eastern Guerrero. We present newly discovered archaeological evidence in the caves of Pozo de Muerto, Casa de la Lluvia, Cauadzidziqui, Juxtlahuaca and Gobernadores de Techan, as well as ethnographic analogy to shed new light on the use of caves as arenas of ritual and political performance from...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mark Willis. Myles Miller.

This is an abstract from the "The Art and Archaeology of the West: Papers in Honor of Lawrence L. Loendorf" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The creation of rock art imagery often involved more than pigments, incisions, and peckings. The natural form of the rock influenced, completed, and enhanced pictographic and petroglyphic shapes and often informed the placement of certain designs. Presenting the complex interactions of natural and human-made...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kimberly Zhu. Guillermo ae Anda.

This is an abstract from the "Studies in Mesoamerican Subterranean Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. It is so widely accepted that the Maya burned copal incense in their rituals that the assumption has gone unquestioned. During the 2018 season, the Gran Acuífero Maya Project began a multi-year investigation of the cave of Balamku near Chichen Itza. The cave contains a large number of incense burners filled with burned material that...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nicholas Kessler. Greg Hodgins. Matthew Guebard. Lucas Hoedl.

This is an abstract from the "Constructing Chronologies I: Stratification and Correlation" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Most radiocarbon measurements informing Bayesian models of cultural sequences are obtained from short-lived organisms such as annual plants and animal bone. Short-lived organic material from plateaus in atmospheric 14C production have a calibrated error that corresponds to the duration of the plateau. This fact hinders Bayesian...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Liam Neill. Michael Slack.

This is an abstract from the "Juukan Gorge: The Story of Destruction, Excavation and Rebuilding" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Since 2022 a team of archaeologists in collaboration with the PKK People has been re-excavating the Juukan 2 site. Under the rubble of the blast, we have found an in situ cultural deposit with largely intact material culture. This paper describes the process and methodology we have used to find this delicate sedimentary...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Aubree Marshall.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Dental calculus (DC), the mineralized plaque or tartar on a tooth’s surface, is formed and fossilized during life. Foodstuffs and medicinal plants that people interact with in life can be caught in the DC matrix. Because DC fossilizes during life, researchers can decalcify DC and analyze the microbotanicals, proteins, and aDNA trapped inside....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gavin Wisner.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This poster provides an analysis of faunal materials from mixed deposits in both the Caves Branch Rockshelter (CBR) and Sapodilla Rockshelter (SDR) in Central Belize. This analysis continues previous research at the two sites from contexts spanning the Protoclassic to Terminal Classic temporal periods concerning ancient Maya ritual and mortuary behaviors. The...