Iconography and epigraphy (Other Keyword)

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 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...

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,...

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...

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...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sara Ladron De Guevara.

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. Images from Las Higueras mural paintings as well as from El Tajín bas reliefs depicting ball players and sacrifice related to the ritual will be presented and discussed. Musicians, ballplayers, and divinities seem to have specific roles. Were the losers or the winners sacrificed? Chroniquers...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jeremy Coltman.

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. It is hard to overstate the rich intellectual benefits that iconographers and epigraphers have been given through the lens of Justin Kerr’s remarkable Maya Vase Database. It not only brought to light a world of gods, rulers, courts, and vivid bestiary but also revealed complex...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alexandre Tokovinine. Sandra Balanzario Granados. Dmitri Beliaev. Clara Alexander. Dana Moot.

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. Re-documentation and analysis of inscribed monuments from the archaeological site of Dzibanche and its vicinity have revealed new details of the history of the Kaanu’l polity during the Classic period. The presentation centers in particular on the narratives recovered from the hieroglyphic stairways of El...

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...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Maarten Jansen. Gabina Perez.

This is an abstract from the "Misinformation and Misrepresentation Part 2: Reconsidering “Human Sacrifice,” Religion, Slavery, Modernity, and Other European-Derived Concepts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Human sacrifice and cannibalism are hallmarks of colonial discourse, which was developed to justify the conquest of the Americas. Particularly Aztec worldview has been presented consistently as pivoting on human sacrifices to “bloodthirsty...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erik Velásquez García. Sandra Balanzario Granados. Alexandre Tokovinine.

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. En abril de 2009 los arqueólogos Enrique Nalda Henández, Sandra Balanzario Granados y Karina González Hernández excavaron una ofrenda (cache) en el interior de una subestructura del Edificio 5 de Ichkabal, megalópolis maya del Preclásico ubicada en el sur de Quintana Roo. Dicha ofrenda contenía fragmentos de...

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...

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...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anthony Villar Quintana.

This is an abstract from the "Cuando los senderos divergen: Reconsiderando las interacciones entre los Andes Septentrionales y los Andes Centrales durante el 1ro y 2do milenio AEC / When Paths Diverge: Reconsidering Interactions between the Northern and Central Andes, First–Second Millennium BCE" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Las excavaciones arqueológicas sistemáticas realizadas en Shoymal (Amazona-Perú) nos permitieron identificar un edificio...

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...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Billie Follensbee.

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. While only small fragments of actual cordage have been recovered in Gulf Coast Olmec excavations, depictions of cordage figure prominently in Olmec and Olmec-related art. Reliefs of string, rope, and knots appear as costume components on Colossal Heads, on figures in the round, and in relief images on...

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...

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....

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...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Liana Jiménez Osorio.

This is an abstract from the "Checking the Pulse II: Current Research in Oaxaca Part 2" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Una manera de conocer los santuarios de la época precolonial es a partir de la evidencia arqueológica, sin embargo, debido al tiempo que ha transcurrido y, principalmente, a su destrucción durante la colonización en 1521, la evidencia material con que se cuenta es escasa y fragmentaria, siendo necesario recurrir a otras fuentes....

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...