Iconography and epigraphy (Other Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dawn Rutecki.

Informed by ethnographic accounts, iconography has helped clarify how people materialized otherwise intangible aspects of their realities. In this paper, I examine the use of raccoons in imagery from Mississippian archaeological contexts. By considering placement of independent raccoon motifs in iconographic scenes, as well as raccoon motifs associated with figures, I identify use patterns of raccoon imagery. Considering these iconographic data alongside faunal data generated from Spiro,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Katherine McCarthy.

This is an abstract from the "Teotihuacan: Multidisciplinary Research on Mesoamerica's Classic Metropolis" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The murals at Teotihuacan have become a common source of fascination in the archaeology and scholarly considerations of the site. Although the site itself may need no introduction, the murals that decorate its walls have been studied with a level of uncertainty. Often depicting complex and abstract...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kelley Hays-Gilpin. Robert Mark. Evelyn Billo.

This is an abstract from the "The Role of Rock Art in Cultural Understanding: A Symposium in Honor of Polly Schaafsma" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Our daily news brings much shouting about building giant walls to divide neighbor from neighbor. We optimistically turn our attention to walls that brought people together—Puebloan painted walls. In the 1960s, the painted kiva walls of Pottery Mound, near Albuquerque, brought artist Polly Schaafsma...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mary Clarke.

This is an abstract from the "Heat, Steam, and Health: The Archaeology of the Mesoamerican Pib Naah (Sweat Baths)" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Sweat baths have been used in Mesoamerica for more than a millennium for humoral medicine, childbirth, and obstetrics, not to mention rituals related to death, birth, and rebirth. During this long period of time, they have held a relatively constant place in mythology; they are ancestral grandmothers who...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christine Hernandez. Gabrielle Vail.

This is an abstract from the "The Ties That Bind: Cordage, Its Sources, and the Artifacts of Its Creation and Use" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ropes and cords in the form of twisted vegetal fibers, or entwined vegetation or serpent bodies, are a common component of Mesoamerican iconography from the Formative period (1500 BCE–250 CE) into the contact era. They serve a variety of functions such as measuring/framing devices, bindings for captives...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Darryl Wilkinson.

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. Following the incorporation of New Mexico into the Spanish Empire, Christianity became an ever more powerful force across the region. Traditionally, we think of Christianity as a "world religion," by definition a trans-local phenomenon. Moreover, whenever Christianity takes on any "local" characteristics, it is assumed that this represents a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Saburo Sugiyama.

This is an abstract from the "Tales of the Feathered Serpent: Refining Our Understanding of an Enigmatic Mesoamerican Being" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Intensive excavations carried out by the Proyecto Templo de Quetzalcoatl more than 20 years ago suggested that the pyramid symbolized human sacrifice, warfare, and rulership in Teotihuacan. The lack of a royal tomb inside the building indicated that more than 200 warriors were sacrificed in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stephanie Lozano.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This study will explore the origin and meaning of the Teotihuacan’s year sign headdress and its connection to the Storm God (Tlaloc). Several scholars have noted the first appearance of the year sign worn by the Storm God starting from the Early Classic period at Teotihuacan. Evidence suggests a fair amount of interaction between Teotihuacan and other parts of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Caitlin Earley.

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. Recent archaeological work at the western Guatemalan site of Quen Santo by the Proyecto Arqueológico de la Región de Chaculá (PARCHA) has investigated the chronology of the site and resulted in the discovery of new monuments. In this paper, I present the results of recent study of these monuments. After reviewing...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Merideth Paxton.

This is an abstract from the "Animal Symbolism in Postclassic Mesoamerica: Papers in Honor of Cecelia Klein" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Dresden Codex is a Postclassic Maya document that is thought to have originated in the Yucatán Peninsula. The opossum figures in the panels at the tops of its section on the New Year (pages 25-28) are associated with the uayeb, the five nameless, unlucky days that mark the ends of the 365-day haabs. A...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jonathan Extract.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Anthropological discourse has placed concerted attention on the role of “axis mundis” in configuring Mesoamerican socio-cosmology. However, in this paper, I highlight the emphasis that many Central Mexican creation-foundation narratives placed on alterity rather than centrality in rendering the boundaries of altepetl “communities.” Nahua cartographic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Stuart.

This is an abstract from the "The Rise and Apogee of the Classic Maya Kaanu’l Hegemonic State at Dzibanche" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The historical importance of the Kaanu’l (Kanul) dynasty and its political networks is now well established. Dzibanche and Calakmul were its two principal centers over the course of the Late Classic period, and the sources we use for reconstructing its history come from many surrounding sites in the southern...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Annabeth Headrick.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper explores the confounding issue of female-gendered images at Teotihuacan. Figures clad in female-gendered clothing appear within Teotihuacan’s most prominent and luxurious arts. Some of the largest sculptures and most precious stone figures are female, and these sculptural images were recovered from highly symbolic, civic spaces. Similarly,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cecelia Klein.

A number of enigmatic human figures in the imagery of late 9th-early 10th century A.D. Chichen Itza can be identified as fire priests, men whose task was to drill, tend, and/or oversee ritual fires reenacting the primordial birth of the sun from a flaming hearth at ancient Teotihuacan. Detailed analysis of the costumes, ceremonial responsibilities, and internal rankings of Chichen’s Itza’s fire priests reveals strong similarities to those of later Aztec fire priests as documented in painted...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Scott Nicolay.

Three Classic Mimbres vessels depict similar ceremonial processions in which individuals carry effigies of animals and/or goggle-eyed beings. The goggle-eyed effigies are versions of a figure common in both Mimbres and Jornada Mogollon rock art that may represent the Mesoamerican rain deity Tlaloc. Similar effigies have been recovered from five cave shrines in southern New Mexico and Arizona: two wooden goggle-eyed figures and one of stone, and two wooden birds. However, modern Pueblo informants...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Karl Taube.

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. Among the most striking signs of Olmec iconography is the "double-merlon," this being a horizontal form supporting two parallel, upwardly projecting tabs. This presentation examines and discusses where it appears in Olmec imagery during the Middle Formative period (1000-400 b.c.), stressing...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Claudia Chang. Sergey Ivanov. Perry Tourtellotte.

This is an abstract from the "World-Systems and Globalization in Archaeology: Assessing Models of Intersocietal Connections 50 Years since Wallerstein’s “The Modern World-System”" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The commodification of aesthetic traditions in the Eurasian steppe world may be explored as a method for tracing the economic and political spheres of the larger Eurasian World System in the first millennium BCE. This paper will address the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only William Ringle.

This is an abstract from the "Tales of the Feathered Serpent: Refining Our Understanding of an Enigmatic Mesoamerican Being" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. From at least the Epiclassic period onward, the Feathered Serpent was frequently accompanied by a Cloud Serpent. In the mythology of the Nahuas he was known as Mixcoatl or Camaxtli in his anthropomorphic form, and was either the father or half-brother of Quetzalcoatl. A patron of the hunt, he...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jennifer Huang.

This is an abstract from the "The Role of Rock Art in Cultural Understanding: A Symposium in Honor of Polly Schaafsma" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Chaco Canyon contains multitudes of petroglyphs and pictographs, yet rock art has not been a prevalent line of evidence in the archaeological study of that pre-contact culture. More than 15,000 Ancestral Puebloan elements attest to the importance of the role of iconography within the canyon. And the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Annabeth Headrick.

In the Early Classic period a distinct characteristic of Central Mexican art is the appearance of warriors in public art. To the contrary, these figures generally appear on more private, personal items in the art of the Classic Maya, though their proliferation on these media distinctly rises in the Late Classic. In a remarkable development, the presence of warriors in public art explodes in Early Postclassic Chichen Itza. While central Mexican influence may have sparked this development, this...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jillian Mollenhauer.

This is an abstract from the "Sculpture of the Ancient Mexican Gulf Coast, Part 1" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Gulf Olmec sculpture is renowned for the cultural, political, and aesthetic precedents it helped to establish in preconquest Mesoamerica. Often its legacy is discussed in relation to the artistic traditions of succeeding civilizations that emerged to the south and west of Olman. However, there has been little recognition of the impact...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Antonio Marín Calvo. Diego Matadamas-Gomora.

This is an abstract from the "Sacrificial and Autosacrifice Instruments in Mesoamerica: Symbolism and Technology" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. It is well-known that autosacrifice was a common practice among Mesoamerican societies since at least the Middle Formative period (ca. 900–300 BC). Iconography suggests that elites offered their blood and did penance to contact with the sacred realm. However, ethnohistoric evidence reveals that this...

DOCUMENT Citation Only James Crandall. Timothy Galowicz.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This poster summarizes several years of investigations into painted rock representation and its social context within the Utcubamba Basin, Amazonas, Eastern Peru. This poster has three aims. The first, to provide an overview of the Utcubamba basin’s forms of painted rock representation. This is significant to a broader history of the region as there are...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anna Brandeberry.

This is an abstract from the "Bringing the Past to Life, Part 1: Papers in Honor of John M. D. Pohl" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. John Pohl’s research is groundbreaking in its analysis of the supporting characters in Mesoamerican royal courts. Secondary elites (including the nobles, priests, merchants, and artisans of the court) vied for power using innovative tactics that worked outside the traditional systems of inherited authority. Pohl’s...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Amanda Castañeda. Charles Koenig. Victoria Roberts. Jerod Roberts.

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 rock imagery of Eagle Nest Canyon (ENC) is well known to many archaeologists and canyon visitors, especially at three sites: Eagle Cave, Kelley Cave, and Skiles Shelter. However, six additional rock imagery sites within ENC and adjacent tributaries are infrequently visited but still provide...