Iconography and epigraphy (Other Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sharisse McCafferty. Geoffrey McCafferty.

This is an abstract from the "Centralizing Central America: New Evidence, Fresh Perspectives, and Working on New Paradigms" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Throughout human history people have been entranced by avians. Their ability to fly from earth to the sky, while displaying grace and beauty, as well as exhibiting a ferocity to protect their nests and hatchlings was revered. Birds were often seen as messengers between the sky and earth,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Mathiowetz.

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. In the long-running debate on the nature of interaction between societies in prehispanic Mesoamerica and the US Southwest/Northwest Mexico, the acquisition of scarlet macaws and their dissemination to the SW/NW has been perplexing. Questions abound as to how and why long-distance social networks were established and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dmitri Beliaev. Alexandre Tokovinine. Milan Kovác.

During the 2017 field season of the Uaxactun Archaeological project new monument was excavated at Buena Vista, a minor center at Uaxactun urban periphery. It is a small carved altar or ballcourt marker, which according to its style dates to the Early Classic. High quality of the carving and the hieroglyphic inscription indicates that the altar/marker itself was a part of the monumental corpus of Uaxactun urban core; uncomplete text provides important new information on the dynastic history of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cherra Wyllie.

This is an abstract from the "Los Rituales del Juego de Pelota en la Costa del Golfo / Ballgame Rituals in the Gulf Lowlands" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In south-central Veracruz, representations of ballplayers, captives, kings, and queens defy clear categorizations, made more complex by costume and gender designations, hierarchical proportion, natural sexual dimorphism, and symbolic roles versus historic portraiture; distinctions that may be...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Tritsch.

A striking example of the sophistication of the vitreous materials industry at the time it was produced, a faience bead depicting Tutankhamun drinking from a white lotus chalice possesses tremendous symbolic meaning that reflects the mores of the ancient Egyptian culture of the time. Although a published piece from the Eton College Collection, this is the first time extensive research has been performed on this unprovenanced artifact bought on the antiquities market in the late 1800s. Production...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alexandre Tokovinine.

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. Maya hieroglyphs are an invaluable source of data about the Classic period religion. However, when it comes to sweat baths, only a small subset of archaeologically investigated structures contains inscriptions. Therefore, any attempt to study this particular aspect of Maya ritual life should consider a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Newman.

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. The practice of human sacrifice is one of the defining traits of ancient Mesoamerica, at least according to the modern imagination. But painted objects, carvings, and codices reveal that nonhuman animals often served as sacrificial victims as well. Were some classes or species of animals...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jesper Nielsen. Christophe Helmke.

Whereas the Epiclassic (AD 600-900) has long been recognized as a period characterized by increased conflict and warfare between the dominant city-states of central Mexico, concrete evidence for actual military actions has been rather limited. Here we discuss epigraphic and iconographic evidence that suggest that two of the major Epiclassic powers, namely Cacaxtla and Xochicalco, were involved in a violent conflict, and that Cacaxtla succeeded in capturing several prominent individuals from...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jacob Welch.

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. Underneath a Classic Maya palace at Ucanha, builders buried a Terminal Preclassic platform outfitted with monumental portraits of rain gods. Analogous architecture appears throughout the Maya lowlands from the Middle Preclassic to Early Classic periods, and several scholars suggest their role in expediting the apotheosis of royal figures into...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Angel González López. Jeremy Coltman. Karl A. Taube. Travis Stanton.

This is an abstract from the "New Perspectives on Ritual Violence and Related Human Body Treatments in Ancient Mesoamerica" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Heart sacrifice constituted one of the most basic yet fundamental tenets of Mesoamerican ritual practice. At Early Postclassic Chichen Itza, as with the later Aztec of Tenochtitlan, hearts and blood were offered to the bellicose solar deity whose daily journey through the sky not only depended...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Keely Yanito.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the Jornada Mogollon cultural area, anthropomorphic representation in rock art and ceramics provides evidence for prehistoric body modification, specifically tattooing. This presentation will focus on the history of the Jumanos, Tompiro and the Mansos. When the Spanish arrived in El Paso in the 14th century, they encountered the Manso, Jumanos, Tompiro...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Victoria Roberts.

This is an abstract from the "The Art of Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Bold Line Geometric is one of five currently identified rock art styles in the Lower Pecos Canyonlands of southwest Texas. It has previously been described as thick, glossy pigment applied in bold lines, geometric shapes, and globular anthropomorphic and zoomorphic forms. In 1965, David Gebhard laid the ground work for the initial description and definition of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Eleanor Harrison-Buck. Timothy Pugh.

This is an abstract from the "Making and Breaking Boundaries in the Maya Lowlands: Alliance and Conflict across the Guatemala–Belize Border" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Following the Classic Maya "collapse" a clustering of traits appear at sites in the Peten – Belize area of the Southern Maya Lowlands. These include new architectural forms, such as circular and colonnaded buildings and the introduction of distinctive portable goods such as...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Catherine Popovici.

Comalcalco displays a radical departure from traditional Maya building materials in its brick and seashell mortar construction instead of the paradigmatic Maya limestone. Incised animal, architecture, hieroglyph, and human forms adorn the brick slabs of principal buildings of Comalcalco’s ceremonial core. However, their inward-facing, or concealed, orientation rendered these markings invisible. Because monumental architecture benefited from the labor of non-elites, the purposeful placement of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only James Brown.

This is an abstract from the "Art Style as a Communicative Tool in Archaeological Research" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Focused stylistic analysis over the past 60 years has made clear that graphic depiction of the creative forces became a vehicle of artistic expression for southeastern societies. Between the 1100s and 1400 such expression was nearly ubiquitous by including, without being confined to, pottery surfaces, marine shell, sheet...

DOCUMENT Citation Only L. Renee Hendricks.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper addresses the inclusion of women within Classic Maya works of art, consisting of, for this purpose, private-consumption ceramic vessels and large scale public monuments. Through the use of Feminist and Gender Theory, Performance Theory, and Iconographic Theory, the roles of women in iconographically depicted ceremonial performance is assessed. A...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Steve Boles.

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. A Cahokia female figurine recovered from Ohio in 1935 was recently brought to light. Although this example is made from limestone, it is identical in all other respects to the Cahokian flint clay suite. Additionally, the limestone was sourced to the St. Louis formation, leaving little doubt as to its...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cherra Wyllie.

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. Cerro de las Mesas Monument 2 is a colossal portrait head. Its flattened rear surface contains a relief-carved scene with a ruler in a broad-brimmed hat, vanquished captive with a calendric sign above his or her head, and a worn hieroglyphic text placed between them. In its entirety Monument 2 bridges the site’s Olmec heritage with...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Carlson. John Hoopes.

The unique monumental stone sculptural form known as a "Chacmool" —a reclining human with an offeratory bowl on its abdomen— first appeared in the late Epiclassic period in Mesoamerica, most notably at the Toltec site of Tula in Central Mexico and the Maya site of Chichen Itza in the Yucatan. The form is known across Mesoamerica in archaeological contexts from Michoacán, Mexico to Guatamala and El Salvador. It persisted in Central Mexico to the time of the Aztec empire and European Contact, when...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Julio Amador. Ofelia Márquez Huitzil.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper is dedicated to carrying out a detailed study of some of the reliefs that were carved on the slopes of Cerro Chalcatzingo, during the Middle Formative period, as well as to present some critical reflections about the interpretations that have been made by other authors. All descriptions imply interpretation, in consequence, every process of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jeremy Coltman.

Chichen Itza has long deserved an approach based on an analysis of the art and iconography of the site for its own merits rather than the continually frustrating analysis that results from attempts to project Late Postclassic religious stories on to the site. Effortlessly blending themes of paradise and militarism, Chichen Itza drew on a wide array of styles that appear in strikingly similar ways indicating the workings of an Early Postclassic International Style that simultaneously integrated...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Francisco Estrada-Belli. Alexandre Tokovinine.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Chochkitam is a major ceremonial center in northeastern Petén, situated among sites with inscribed monuments such as Xultun, La Honradez, Río Azul in Guatemala, and La Milpa in Belize, giving us a few data points on the shifting political history of the Early and Late Classic periods. Since the discovery in 2021 of a carved frieze with a dedicatory...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Maline Werness-Rude.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Chocholá style ceramics were part of a Late Classic northern Maya complex of luxury goods that identified the social status and political affiliation of their owners. Vessels in the style are distinguished by their deeply carved iconographic panels, distinctive formatting, and unique dedicatory formulae. Their recognizability—a necessary component of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kaylee Spencer.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ancient Maya artists fashioned ceramic cache vessels that bear a rich array of painted imagery and iconography, making them popular subjects for scholarly investigation. Themes focusing on bloodletting and burning rites are emphasized in many of these discussions, and these themes form the foundations for interpreting the meanings and uses of this class of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joanne Baron.

This is an abstract from the "The Rollout Keepers: Papers on Maya Ceramic Texts, Scenes, and Styles in Honor of Justin and Barbara Kerr" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Kerr cataloging project at Dumbarton Oaks is creating opportunities to re-examine iconographic motifs and hieroglyphic texts on Maya pottery. One avenue in which this has been fruitful is the analysis of vessels depicting wahy creatures. In modern communities, ways are powerful...