Iconography and epigraphy (Other Keyword)

126-150 (287 Records)

The Invisibility of Experience: Accessing Ancient Sensory Frameworks (2018)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Robyn Price.

While archaeological analyses that focus on the experiential and sensorial past are becoming more common, scholars continue to discuss and dispute what knowledge of the past is accessible. Without moving beyond the material remains and into the realm of the self-reflexive researcher (Hamilakis 2013: 119), this paper will demonstrate that archaeologists do not need to stray too far from their traditional methods to uncover rich evidence of past sensory lives. By drawing from the field of art...


Jade Faces: Heirlooms and Emulations in Olmec and Maya Art (2021)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Michelle Rich. Matthew Robb. David Freidel.

This is an abstract from the "Dancing through Iconographic Corpora: A Symposium in Honor of F. Kent Reilly III" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. From the colossal heads of the Olmec to the severed head of the Maya Maize God in the Popol Vuh, the head and face have been of singular importance in Mesoamerican art and thought. If the human body is an axis mundi, the head and face give that axis a physical manifestation of individuality. A nexus of...


Jade, Scepters, and Seats of Power: Symbols of Authority on the Central American Coast, 300 BC-AD 300 (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Rebecca Mendelsohn.

This is an abstract from the "Coastal Connections: Pacific Coastal Links from Mexico to Ecuador" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper documents a widespread shift during the period from 300 BC-AD 300 toward symbolism associated with authority and rulership along the Pacific coast, throughout the region spanning between southern Chiapas and the Nicoya Peninsula of Costa Rica. During this period, several notable changes in burial patterns,...


Jaguar Fur, Snake Skin, Woven Baskets, and the Milky Way: The Dot-Grid Pattern from Nicaragua to Ecuador (2021)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Laura Wingfield.

This is an abstract from the "The Precolumbian Dotted-Diamond-Grid Pattern: References and Techniques" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Dotted grids abound in art of Pacific Nicaragua southward through Costa Rica and Panama to Ecuador, whether on painted and incised ceramic vessels or chiseled stone sculptures. These images reflect ancient fiber arts now lost to the elements in these tropical lands. The designs, recorded on clay and stone, appear to...


Jaguar Serpents, Smoke, and Ropes: Iconographic Analysis of Olmec Thrones incl. La Venta Altar IV and Oxtotitlan Mural I (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Brendan Stanley. Tara D. Smith.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Formerly identified cosmograms for the Olmec culture include the Dallas Plaque and the Las Limas figure. Politically, this vision is centered by Olmec rulers which is visible through the iconographic interpretations of works including La Venta Altar 4, Oxtotlitlan Mural 1, among others. These interpretations build on the work of previous scholars and are...


The Kaanul Dynasty and the Early History of the Northwest Petén (2021)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Tomas Barrientos. Marcello Canuto. David Stuart.

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. Over the past two decades it has become increasingly clear that the ancient Maya political landscape was permeated by regional systems of political asymmetry. These hegemonic networks fluctuated through time, but the steady presence of a few especially dominant polities shows that they were a...


La Piedra del Gigante de Orizaba y el Monolito de Maltrata: Estudios iconográficos y su protección como patrimonio arqueológico (2021)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Yamile Lira-Lopez.

This is an abstract from the "Sculpture of the Ancient Mexican Gulf Coast, Part 2" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. La Piedra del Gigante y el Monolito de Maltrata, pertenecen a lo que se llama escultura monumental en piedra, y se encuentran ubicadas en la región de los valles intermontanos de las Grandes Montañas, al centro y oeste de estado de Veracruz. Son importantes representaciones en bloque amorfo de piedra que relatan un evento...


Las mujeres en los rituales de final de periodo durante el Clásico maya (250-900 dC) (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Maria Elena Vega-Villalobos. Ana Garcia Barrios. Alejandra Martinez de Velasco.

This is an abstract from the "The Role of Women in Mesoamerican Ritual" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Durante el periodo Clásico se esculpieron dinteles y estelas donde algunas mujeres de sitios específicos desempeñaron un papel relevante en las ceremonias de final de periodo. Así lo atestiguan inscripciones de varias ciudades del Usumacinta y de la región de Petén, entorno geográfico en el que se centrará nuestro trabajo. La escritura...


Late Preceramic Peruvian Effigy Mound Imagery (2018)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Bob Benfer.

Here I report the use of multiple imagery for understanding the coastal valley site studied most intensively, El Paraíso. Photographs of carved bone figures, plane table maps, Total Station maps, kite orthophoto maps, aerial photos, Google Earth satellite maps, and planetarium maps provide images that, taken together, permit identification of the effigies. Identities of both arms of the El Paraíso complex can be recognized: One is a bird. The other resembles the three mythical figures Bischof...


Like a Lion, as a Man: Seals and Poetry in Minoan Crete (2018)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Emily Anderson.

This paper investigates how parallels were drawn between lions and human in Bronze Age Crete, and how this parallelism potentially developed concurrently through material culture worn on the human body and oral narrative. I argue that the unique qualities of seal stones, namely their close association with human identity and their physical location on the human body, positioned them to be potent venues for asserting parallels between man and beast. I begin in the late Early Bronze Age, with a...


Living Symbols from a Mythic Landscape: An Exegesis of the Apalachee Ballgame Story and Placemaking in Northwest Florida (2021)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Jesse Nowak.

This is an abstract from the "Dancing through Iconographic Corpora: A Symposium in Honor of F. Kent Reilly III" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Dr. Kent F. Reilly and many of the scholars associated with the Mississippian Iconography Workshop have used ethnography and folklore to support interpretations about ritual and cosmology. This talk discusses how ancient landscapes can, in turn, inform folklore, ritual communication, and iconography....


Looking Beyond Teotihuacan in the Art and Architecture of Early Classic Kaminaljuyu (2018)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Lucia Henderson.

This paper examines the foreign connections evidenced by the material record of Early Classic Kaminaljuyu. The author discusses the ways in which public art, architecture, and elite funerary contexts evolved at Kaminaljuyu during this time, evaluating how these changing styles may have tied into evolving relationships with distant sites and regions such as Teotihuacan, Veracruz, and the Maya lowlands. The Early Classic relationship between Kaminaljuyu and Teotihuacan has, in many ways, eclipsed...


Making Sense and Divining Senses: Maya Royal Courts and Communities (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Charles Golden. Takeshi Inomata.

This is an abstract from the "Decipherment, Digs, and Discourse: Honoring Stephen Houston's Contributions to Maya Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Throughout his decades of scholarship, Stephen Houston has fundamentally changed our understanding of Maya courtly life and community. He synergistically weaves results from groundbreaking decipherment and archaeological excavations like no other scholar in the field. His many publications...


Making sense of a Holy Trinity: the Dioses Narigudos of Classic period Central Veracruz (2018)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Annick J. E. Daneels.

Dioses Narigudos are a series of ceramic figurines that are extremely frequent during the Classic period in a very restricted area of South Central Veracruz. They occur generally in ritual deposits under floors of major and minor buildings, combining female and male representations of different hierarchy. Current interpretations relate them to a solar deity or a water deity, none of which identifications apply to all three main figurine types. Their attributes and the contexts in which they are...


Male Court Dress on Late Classic Maya Vases (2018)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Charles Cheek.

Dress is an object made up of other objects. I combine a practice approach with the chaîne opératoire and behavior chains methods to analyze technical and social acts involving dress objects. The analysis starts with one segment of the actions involving dress—the actual act of dressing. The study includes only court scenes that appear to memorialize historic events, although some of the observations and conclusions can be applied to other kinds of scenes and other media. After identifying the...


The Many Meanings and Uses of Tomo-Kahni Rock Art (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only David Whitley.

This is an abstract from the "Interdisciplinary Approaches to Rock Art Documentation, Research, and Analysis" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Certain current rock art debates involve methodological rather than empirical issues (as incorrectly but commonly assumed), reflecting researchers’ unfamiliarity with principles of symbolic analysis and the resulting functions and meanings of rock art sites. One key error concerns the fact that symbols are...


Material Signatures for Idolatry in Sixteenth- to Eighteenth-Century Viceregal Yucatan (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Lorraine Williams-Beck.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Rampant idolatry and Mayan resistance to the religious conquest, narrated in Early Viceregal Yucatan documents, bespeaks an underlying visual component for continuing traditional religious practices. Franciscan rural chapels, churches, and convents interior mural paintings and architectural facade sculptural details provide the material signatures to...


The Maya Wall Paintings of Chajul (Guatemala): Iconography (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Katarzyna Radnicka-Dominiak.

This is an abstract from the "The Maya Wall Paintings of Chajul (Guatemala)" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The revealing of Chajul mural paintings has opened a completely new chapter in the history of colonial art of Latin America. Most of today’s known examples of colonial art are located in churches or other buildings related to religious spheres, while Chajul murals cover walls of private houses of Ixil Maya families. Not only the location of...


Maya-Teotihuacan Relations Viewed from Front D at the Plaza of the Columns (2018)
DOCUMENT Citation Only William Fash. Nawa Sugiyama. Barbara Fash. Mariela Pérez Antonio. Alexis Hartford.

Two distinct excavation contexts from Front D in the Plaza of the Columns Complex yielded pictorial representations in different artistic media that strongly suggest the presence of Maya artists in Plaza 50, decades prior to the famous Teotihuacan "Entrada" of 378 C.E. in the Petén. Excavations at this civic-administrative structure at the heart of the ceremonial core of Teotihuacan have revealed a sequence of numerous plaster floors in Plaza 50 associated with Structure 44, whose form is...


Mayan Spelling Conventions: Late Preclassic through Late Classic (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only David Mora-Marin.

This is an abstract from the "Coffee, Clever T-Shirts, and Papers in Honor of John S. Justeson" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper deals with the topic that inspired me to study with John Justeson: it traces the major spelling practices of Mayan writing from the Late Preclassic through the Late Classic periods. It employs the evidence from Late Preclassic and Early Classic inscriptions, some of which I have documented myself, as well as the...


Media and Meaning in “The Maya Scribe and His World” (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Caitlin Earley.

This is an abstract from the "A Celebration and Critical Assessment of "The Maya Scribe and His World" on its Fiftieth Anniversary" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Among Michael Coe’s many contributions to Maya studies with his landmark show and publication “The Maya Scribe and His World” was the observation that imagery on Classic Maya ceramics is different from imagery on carved stone monuments. Coe notes this gap between ceramic and stone...


Members of the Community: Animal Sculptures as Kin (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only S. Margaret Spivey-Faulkner.

This is an abstract from the "Multispecies Frameworks in Archaeological Interpretation: Human-Nonhuman Interactions in the Past, Part II" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeological evidence at the Fort Center archaeological site in south Florida indicates that rooftop statuary depicting animals were treated as members of the community. This evidence is found in the watery interment of these sculptures alongside human community members over...


Metallurgy, Shamanism, and Ideographic Currency in Bering Strait: Scythian Descent? (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Owen Mason.

This is an abstract from the "From the Altai to the Arctic: New Results and New Directions in the Archaeology of North and Inner Asia" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Late Holocene Bering Strait acted as a filter, marked by intermittent material and technological cross-strait transfers; first of obsidian, ca. 3000 BCE, storage or serving ceramics adopted ca. 1000 BCE, of metallurgic iron ca. 200 CE, rare cast-bronze objects ca. 1150 CE, armor...


Metaphor in Precolumbian Mesoamerica: In Honor of John Justeson (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Rebecca Dinkel.

This is an abstract from the "Coffee, Clever T-Shirts, and Papers in Honor of John S. Justeson" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. John Justeson is well-known for contributions to the documentation of Mesoamerican indigenous languages and writing systems. Justeson’s work on metaphor has received less attention, given that work on metaphor in precolumbian Mesoamerica is just now gaining traction. Justeson’s work stands out as being the first to adopt a...


Michael D. Coe and the Códice Maya de México (Grolier) Controversy (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Jeremy Coltman. Andrew Turner.

This is an abstract from the "A Celebration and Critical Assessment of "The Maya Scribe and His World" on its Fiftieth Anniversary" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The controversial display of “Códice Maya de México” at the Grolier Club in 1971 and its subsequent publication by Coe in “The Maya Scribe and His World” opens debate regarding archaeologists’ involvement with unprovenienced objects. The sudden appearance of the previously unknown...