Iconography and epigraphy (Other Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Carolyn Boyd.

Pecos River style rock art was produced in the Lower Pecos Canyonlands of southwest Texas and Coahuila, Mexico during the Archaic beginning around 2700 BC. This style is characterized by finely executed anthropomorphic and zoomorphic figures arranged in highly-ordered, complex compositions. Pecos River style anthropomorphs are frequently portrayed with a series of dots emanating upwards from an open mouth. Zoomorphic figures of felines and deer are also represented with this pictographic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gabrielle Vail.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This poster examines the implications of imagery identified as relating to Mesaomerican “Flower Worlds” on spindle whorls left in situ in Balankanche’ Caverns by actors who used the caverns in the Terminal Classic period (ninth and tenth centuries) to invoke ritual-mythic time within this underworld space that was seen as the place of human creation and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Johann Begel. Cédric Becquey.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Mayan stelae and altars are a key epigraphic and iconographic source for understanding the political history of the Classic period (250-900 AD). Tikal produced a particularly large number of these monuments in a variety of architectural contexts: Twin Pyramids Groups, Plazas, Great Temples, residential groups and even remote areas, probably corresponding...

DOCUMENT Citation Only James Doyle.

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. As a graduate student, Stephen Houston contributed references as well as two personal communications to the catalogue for The Blood of Kings: Dynasty and Ritual in Maya Art, including drawing Linda Schele and Mary Miller’s attention to key details of an exhibition centerpiece: the Kimbell Art...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Henri Bernard. Sara Ladrón de Guevara.

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. The first reported green stone figurines from controlled excavations in Mesoamerica occur in Middle Formative (900–400 BC) contexts. Among the best known are those from Offering 4 at La Venta. Mid-twentieth-century excavations at La Venta, conducted by Mathew Stirling, Philip Drucker, and Robert Heizer, also produced the largest...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jacob Lozano.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Varying facets of ancient Maya visual expression have long documented cultural elements of identity, political relationships, and social organization. These components manifest in a spectrum of archaeological material and cultural remains. Within the abundant regions and polities, evidence suggests the existence of local artistic and scribal traditions....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Julie Zimmermann.

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. I have argued that Cahokia might best be understood as the capital of a Native American theater state, which drew people to it and spread its influence not through armies but by attracting followers through theatrical rituals (Zimmermann Holt 2009). In current research I argue that storytelling was primary among those rituals....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marjorie Burge.

This is an abstract from the "Current Issues in Japanese Archaeology (2019 Archaeological Research in Asia Symposium)" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Traditional understandings of the history of writing in Japan have been both greatly enriched and substantially challenged by materials recovered from archaeological excavations. In particular, the continued recovery from archaeological contexts of the inscribed wooden documents known as mokkan has...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Victoria Roberts. Kaylee Henderson. Jerod Roberts.

This is an abstract from the "Almost 100 Years since Julio C. Tello: Research at Huaca del Loro, Nasca, Peru" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. With the discovery of a Wari D-Shaped temple and other adjacent architectural structures in 2019, the 2022 field season at Huaca del Loro focused on excavation of the temple complex. Well preserved mud plaster still remained on many of the walls and floors of the structures. Examination of the walls in the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Eleanor Howell. Paul Nick Kardulias.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This study examines stylistic and thematic variation as seen in a sample of P51 type Viking Age (approx. AD 700-1100) oval brooches excavated mostly from burial contexts in central Sweden. As examples of applied art heavily reproduced through casting and imitation, paired oval brooches have the potential to reveal a great deal about how artisans perceived...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ryohei Takatsuchi. Karina López Hernández. Víctor Cortés Meléndez.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Pre-Columbian material and visual culture encapsulate ideologies and symbolism of the Mesoamerican past. Birds play important roles in Mesoamerican societies, both as daily sources of food and in symbolic and ideological contexts found in ceramic and sculptural iterations combined with archaeological and zooarchaeological contexts. This paper will examine...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elizabeth Baquedano.

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. Frogs and toads were important animals in Mesoamerica with several species of Mexican frogs. They were especially associated with the rainy season. Some species of frogs are active above ground only in the reproductive period while some species of toads spend part of the year underground. These batrachians are...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lois Martin.

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. Several precolumbian royal garments with simple, repeating geometric designs have explicit associations to maize, and hint at a deep significance to the cloth pattern–corn plant connection. In the Andes, Inca Coyas (noblewomen) wore special woven belts during the annual corn-planting ceremony. Sophie Desrosiers...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rex Koontz.

This presentation investigates the narrative context of a Tajín region deity whose diagnostic characteristics include a large hank of hair and an extended upper lip. The figure appears in narrative scenes with the major Tajín deities, often playing what seems to be a subsidiary role. The most important association in these scenes is with a liquid-filled temple that plays a key role scenes of ballcourt ritual. The same deity appears in pars pro toto representations of sacrificial scenes with...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Susan Milbrath.

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. Ritual violence is well represented in the Codex Borgia, a masterpiece from early sixteenth-century Central Mexico. Narrative scenes depict Venus gods alongside deities honored during seasonal *veintena festivals known from the Valley of Mexico and Tlaxcala. The Aztec Tlacaxipehualiztli festival...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kim Richter.

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. Although the Huasteca belongs to the Mesoamerican culture area and the Gulf Coast region, some scholars have asserted that its culture, emblematized by its sculptural tradition, was isolated. The examination of Huastec stone sculptures from different periods reveals not only its links to other artistic traditions in Mesoamerica but...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alexandre Tokovinine. Francisco Estrada Belli.

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. The paper presents the results of the last decade of archeological and epigraphic research that clarify the history of the reigns of Holmul and Naranjo during the expansion of the Dzibanché dynasty in eastern Petén in the second half of the sixth century and the first half of the seventh century...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ellie Tamura.

This is an abstract from the "The Current State of Archaeological Research across Southeast Asia" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Bagan was Myanmar’s political, economic, and cultural centre during the country’s Classical period (c. 800-1400 CE). Encompassing an area of 80 kilometers square, this landscape was home to approximately 4,000 brick monuments. These monuments were the result of the Buddhist pursuit of merit-making, the idea that...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Angel González López. Lorena Vázquez Vallín.

This is an abstract from the "The Flower World: Religion, Aesthetics, and Ideology in Mesoamerica and the American Southwest" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. One of our primary sources of descriptive information about the Flower World comes from Central Mexican colonial historical documents. While ethnohistorical accounts have portrayed this world with shared beliefs of the floral paradise, this paper provides a complementary scenario, by...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Linda Honeycutt.

This is an abstract from the "Adopting the Pueblo Fettle: The Breadth and Depth of the Basketmaker III Cultural Horizon" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This illustrated talk uses photographs of Basketmaker III painted bowls and sherds to illustrate four characteristics of BMIII pottery motifs. The data for this talk is derived from 10 years of study on ceramic collections from more than 100 Basketmaker III sites in the Four Corners Region.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joshua Englehardt. Michael Carrasco.

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. Through the lens of “conceptual convergence,” we examine the multiple symbolic strands that inform specific Gulf Coast sculptural images, focusing especially on the Tenaxpi Egg/Homshuk sculpture. This sculpture, excavated on Tenaxpi Island in Lake Catemaco, shows a figure sculpted on an egg-shaped stone. This image likely references...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gary Urton.

Studies of the extant corpus of some 1,000 khipus from different regions around the former territory of the Inka Empire – Tawantinsuyu – show evidence of contradictory forces at work in terms of the forms and degree of standardization of recording structures and techniques. While, on one hand, there are marked differences in certain features of khipus from one region to the next throughout the empire, there are, on the other hand, notable similarities in other features. This paper examines the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stephanie Lozano.

This paper explores Teotihuacan references found within the corpus of ancient Maya inscriptions. Classic Maya inscriptions analyzed for this investigation were derived from monumental architecture to ceramics. In the last decade more references to Teotihuacan within Classic Maya hieroglyphic writing have surfaced within the archaeological record and in museum collections. However, recently there has not been an in-depth study that analyzes the context of these recently uncovered references....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Annabeth Headrick.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Teotihuacan exhibits a broad trend of shared wealth, exhibited by numerous luxurious apartment compounds whose residents accessed considerable quantities of valuables, as reflected by portraiture of richly clad mid-elites and the mass production of costume elements. Chichen Itza similarly eschewed royal portraiture in favor of works portraying group...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Holly Pittman.

Production of textiles rose to an industrial level in the late Uruk period of southern Mesopotamia. Iconographic sources found in glyptic art provide a detailed visual description of aspects of this industry. Gender differentiation is clearly institutionalize, with women preparing the thread and skeins while males are engaged in the actual weaving. This paper presents a close analysis of a single motif in the glyptic iconography, offering an explanation of what has previously been identified...