Iconography and epigraphy (Other Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dante García. Nelly Robles.

This is an abstract from the "Avances en los estudios de la arquitectura de Monte Albán" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. En los sistemas de escritura precolombina de Mesoamérica, la zapoteca se conoce principalmente por los diversos estudios realizados en el desciframiento de estelas, pintura mural y vasijas cerámicas que han permitido conocer importantes informaciones sobre las élites político-sociales, sus alianzas matrimoniales, rituales...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Claudia Camacho-Trejo.

This is an abstract from the "Crossing Boundaries: Interregional Interactions in Pre-Columbian Times" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Mexicas were one of the civilizations that achieved a striking power of acquisition during Postclassic Mesoamerica. Through trade routes reaching down to Central America, they were able to procure exotic materials and artifacts not accessible in the basin of Mexico. One of these exotic materials was flint, a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Zachary Critchley.

Spear-thrower devices held a role around the world as a primary weapon and tool before slowly falling out of favor in certain areas for other projectile weapons. While it is widely accepted that spear-throwers were used by the people of the ancient central Andes, comparatively little research has gone into the role that they had as weapons of war, hunting tools, and objects of ceremonial reverence. Many Andean societies have rich traditions of art and iconography, often portraying human and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cathy Costin.

This is an abstract from the "Magic, Spirits, Shamanism, and Trance" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Although a shamanic component has long been recognized in Andean Formative cultures, recent research on Cupisnique (ca. 1200–900 BCE) ceramic iconography yields evidence for more varied, more prevalent, and much more far-reaching use of therapeutic and entheogenic substances during the early phases of Andean prehistory than has been previously...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Carlos Alvarez. Lynneth Lowe.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The abundance of pottery stamps, variety of designs and quality of its craftsmanship during the Postclassic period, contrasts with the scarce studies regarding these special artifacts whose analysis can contribute to the knowledge of significant aspects of ancient Maya culture. These stamps were used to imprint decorative motifs on the human body, fabrics,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gabriela Saldaña. Tia Watkins. Emma Messinger. Rosamund Fitzmaurice. Jaime Awe.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Classic Maya graffiti (AD 300–800) provides a unique perspective of individual experiences, with figures etched onto plastered surfaces that were added as secondary elements within existing architecture. In the Maya lowlands, graffiti is typically found within monumental architecture, as these contexts favor preservation in tropical environments. The...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Emanuela Rudnicka.

This is an abstract from the "A Decade of Multidisciplinary Research at Castillo de Huarmey, Peru" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The technological, stylistic, and iconographical aspects of decorated gourds are yet insufficiently addressed by researchers of precolumbian Andean art. This paper investigates Wari pyro-engraved gourd vessels that have been discovered during the excavation process at Castillo de Huarmey since 2013. The archaeological...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jera Davis.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Maypop (Passiflora incarnata), also known as passionflower, is a climbing vine native to the southeastern United States. Based on its common occurrence in precontact middens and its preference for anthropogenic habitats, maypop is identified as a weed crop cultivated since at least the Late Archaic period. Judging from ethnographic and ethnohistoric...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christina McSherry.

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...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dillon Gisch.

This is an abstract from the "What Have You Done For Us Lately?: Discrimination, Harassment, and Chilly Climate in Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Since 1792, nine catalogues of surviving ancient Roman replicas of the Knidian Aphrodite—the first monumental image of an unclothed woman in Western art—have been compiled. During this time, the number of known ancient replicas has increased by two orders of magnitude, yet analyses of this...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sahar Monrreal.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The use of popular images containing people of color in colonial settings serve as a useful tool for archaeologists using widely circulated images like advertising for explaining or enhancing discussions regarding racial and social differences found in the historical record. However, as more than a supplement to archaeological discussion, these images can...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Benjamin Alberti.

This is an abstract from the "Northern Rio Grande History: Routes and Roots" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaic foragers represent one extreme of the relationship between routes and roots. There is a wealth of evidence in the US Southwest of the itinerant, ambulatory lifeways of ancient populations—impermanent campsites, lithic scatters near likely animal trails and watering holes, and the enigmatic rock art that appears along watercourses or...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Carolyn Boyd.

This is an abstract from the "The Art of Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Lower Pecos Canyonlands of southwest Texas and northern Mexico are home to one of the most sophisticated and compositionally intricate rock art traditions in the world—the Pecos River style. This style is characterized by finely executed, polychromatic figures woven together to form mythic narratives. Artists depicted and vivified the actors in these...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Angel González López.

The rise of the Aztec Mexica Empire is well represented in the archaeological record,especially through the wide spread evidence of stone sculptures in the main Precinct of the imperial capital. In less two hundred year of history, the island became the principal producer of these artifacts. Its workshops created not only numerically more pieces, butalso monumental pieces and sculptures with complex iconography and new discourses. This paper will discuss the problem of using the term "Aztec" to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Goran Djurdjevich.

This is an abstract from the "And They Look into the Mirror for Answers: Mirror Analysis to Understand Its Holder" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Roman Empire and Qin-Han China were two of the most significant and powerful states and empires in antiquity. Building upon recent research findings, and drawing inspiration from the numerous archaeological discoveries of mirrors in the both empires, this proposed paper aims to demonstrate how...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jerald Ek.

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. The nature of Teotihuacan influence in the Maya Area has been a topic of enduring controversy. A growing corpus of evidence indicates direct political intervention by Teotihuacan across the Maya Lowlands starting in 378 CE facilitated through links with the Mutal Dynasty of Tikal. Emulation was...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Sherwood. Jan Simek. Alan Cressler.

This presentation reports on a new rock art site from Kentucky, brought to the authors' attention by local citizens. Inside a large sandstone rockshelter, more than a dozen black pictographs show several anthropomorphic characters. These images bear distinctive features and regalia associated with the "Redhorn Cycle" hero narrative reported by Paul Radin in 1948 from his ethnographic work among the Ho-Chunk. The rock art from this "Morning House" strongly resembles well-known Mississippian...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Emily Van Alst.

This is an abstract from the "Gender in Archaeology over the Last 30+ Years" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The study of gender within the archaeological discipline has been a cornerstone of archaeological theory since the late 1980s. Though the study of gender has been foundational in changing our understanding of past peoples, there has been a severe lack of consideration of Indigenous women’s knowledge as well as Indigenous feminist...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Thomas Pozorski. Shelia Pozorski. Rosa Marin Jave.

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...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Stuart.

This is an abstract from the "The Mexica Royal Court: A Symposium in Honour of Alfredo López Austin" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Chapultepec is well known as a sacred mountain, water source, and ceremonial locale within the landscape immediately surrounding Tenochtitlan. Still visible today on the hill’s eastern slope is the sculpture of the deified portrait of Moteczomah Xocoyotzin, facing toward the main precinct and overlooking a large...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mallory Matsumoto.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Classic Maya (250–900 CE) lowlands of Mesoamerica were occupied by dozens of interconnected polities whose elites shared a common intellectual and material culture, as well as sociopolitical institutions like divine kingship and the role of ritual performance in legitimating dynastic rule. This paper suggests that an important context for maintaining...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Daniela La Chioma.

This is an abstract from the "Music Archaeology's Paradox: Contextual Dependency and Contextual Expressivity" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In Moche art, archaeological evidence related to sound and music can be found in cultural materials from sculptured bottles to the notorious fine-line paintings. Sound-producing instruments, musicians, and musical performances have been featured worldwide in museum expositions and scholarly discourse about...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nóra Nic Aoidh.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Despite roads and railways around the world being based on the widths of their bodies, non-human animals are now systematically excluded from much of modern western life. In some of the most human-populated areas, animals are forbidden from indoor spaces and from many private outdoor spaces. However, these carefully curated and restrictive relationships we...

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...

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...