Iconography and epigraphy (Other Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Buck Woodard. Danielle Moretti-Langholtz.

This is an abstract from the "Deep History, Colonial Narratives, and Decolonization in the Native Chesapeake" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Popularly known as “Powhatan’s Mantle,” the shell-decorated and sewn animal skins are an iconic object of material culture from seventeenth-century Virginia. On display in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, England, we argue that the Mantle’s provenance and possible links to Indigenous cosmology have been...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Keith Jordan.

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. This paper examines the predatory animals on the relief friezes of Pyramid B at Tula, clearly based on Teotihuacan models originally expressed in different media and contexts--murals in interior spaces--and the possible reasons for both Tula's borrowing of this imagery and its redeployment in sculpture in the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Hirokazu Kotegawa.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Dentro y fuera de Mesoamérica, se encuentran varios objetos portátiles con la iconografía olmeca. Pero ¿este fenómeno está mostrando la movilidad de los olmecas? Es difícil de responder esta pregunta porque los objetos pequeños se pueden trasladar de distintas maneras. Sin embargo, también hay otros objetos no portátiles con la iconografía olmeca para...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jessica Lévy.

Pyro-engraved gourds discovered by the "Nasca Project" (CEAP) in Cahuachi, Nasca ceremonial center located in the basin of Río Grande, can provide new data about their manufacture and decoration. From a comparative perspective, we study artifact characteristics and archaeological records to understand an unusually large and complex pyro-engraved found during 1994 excavations as an offering associated with ceramics from the last phase of the Early Horizon (Ocucaje 8-9) and the beginning of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Karen Ryan. Elsa Cencig. Susan Lofthouse. Tommy Weetaluktuk.

This is an abstract from the "Social Archaeology in the North and North Atlantic (SANNA 3.0): Investigating the Social Lives of Northern Things" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In 2017, the Canadian government nominated eight places as candidates for future designation as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. One of those is Qajartalik, located off the coast of Nunavik, where more than 180 anthropomorphic faces were carved into soapstone outcrops between...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Suzanne Baker.

This is an abstract from the "The Problem of the Monument: Widening Perspectives on Monumentality in the Archaeology of the Isthmo-Colombian Area" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ometepe is the largest island in Lake Coçibolca (Lake Nicaragua), itself the largest body of freshwater between Lake Titicapa in South America and the Great Lakes of North America. Its topography is unique, composed of two volcanoes—one active (Concepción) and one ancient...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Emily Umberger.

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. Quetzalcoatl (Feathered Serpent) is often characterized as a wind god, but in Aztec sculptures, the traits of the wind god Ehecatl, principally the buccal mouth mask, are not found mixed with feathered serpent imagery. The mix is found in pictorial manuscripts, and alluded to in written...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jeb Card.

Certain classes of material culture found in Honduras and El Salvador have long been recognized as being related to "Maya style" artwork and artifacts from Copan and Classic Maya cities to the north and west. These objects have been framed through questions of "influence", ethnicity, and boundaries. The recent re-analysis of a ceramic flask from Tazumal, with an unusual inscription tying the object to a Copan king and imagery of tribute, suggests a more distinct political lens through which to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Amanda Castañeda. Charles Koenig. Larry Loendorf. Julie Francis.

This is an abstract from the "Interdisciplinary Approaches to Rock Art Documentation, Research, and Analysis" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Greybull South (48BH92) is a rock art site located along the east bank of the Bighorn River near Greybull, Wyoming. The site was first documented in 1951 as part of the Yellowtail Reservoir survey project, but the site gained regional notoriety in 1962 when large blocks containing petroglyphs were removed...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jillian Mollenhauer.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. For decades debate among Formative scholars has raged over whether to classify Gulf Olmec societies as archaic states or chiefdoms; yet scholars on both sides have assumed that these societies were governed by elites under the jurisdiction of a single hereditary ruler. Stone monuments in the form of altar-thrones, stelae, and—most particularly—colossal...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jillian Mollenhauer.

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. Studies of feathered serpent imagery during Mesoamerica's Formative Period range widely in their conclusions, with little agreement about the parameters of inquiry, associated iconographic conventions, or even what constitutes a "feathered" serpent. Images of serpentine creatures have been...

DOCUMENT Citation Only James Farmer.

The Barrier Canyon Style (aka. Barrier Canyon Anthropomorphic Style) is widely regarded as one of the more prominent and significant pictographic rock art styles in North America, and the Great Gallery from Horseshoe Canyon in Utah has long been recognized as both the type-site and arguably most prominent and complex of all Barrier Canyon Style sites. It is also the most overly exploited and often visually abused site in popular visual culture. Beyond scholarly reproduction, images of the Great...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Virginia Miller.

This is an abstract from the "The Movement of People and Ideas in Eastern Mesoamerica during the Ninth and Tenth Centuries CE: A Multidisciplinary Approach Part II" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The striking recumbent stone figure known as a chacmool is a defining feature of the Mesoamerican Terminal Classic and Postclassic, occurring not only at Chichen Itza and Tula, where the largest number of figures is documented, but also in later Mexica...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tia Watkins. Rosamund Fitzmaurice. Christophe Helmke. Jaroslaw Zralka. Jaime Awe.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The precolumbian game of patolli was imbued with ideals of competition, risk, and ritual significance. The board game had a widespread presence across Mesoamerica throughout the Classic period (~ AD 250–820) and was often etched into the surfaces of monumental architecture. Recent excavations led by the Belize Valley Archaeological Reconnaissance project...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Chun Yu.

This is an abstract from the "Populations of Early Medieval China: Developing Anthropological Approaches to Historical Archaeology in China" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Over the course of the last two decades there have been a number of hoards of Buddhist statues excavated in Northern China. Each of these hoards contains several hundred statues of varying forms and quality. This study examines both the form and the tool marks on the statues to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cannon Fairbairn.

This is an abstract from the "Archaeologies of Motherhood" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. To understand the usage of breastfeeding in ancient Egyptian art and ritual it is necessary to examine and explore the ancient perspectives and beliefs which contextualized their creation. This includes the role of breastfeeding in a child’s upbringing and growth as well as the relationship between a child and its nurse (whether mother or wet-nurse) with my...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Catherine Nuckols-Wilde.

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. In the mid-eighth century, Copan’s fifteenth ruler, K’ahk’ Yipyaj Chan K’awiil, oversaw the completion of Structure 10L-26 (or Temple 26), which was crowned with a stone inscription located within the superstructure. This inscription features a parallel display of Maya full-figure glyphs alongside...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alberto Ortiz Brito.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. After excavating Gulf Coast archaeological sites, Alfonso Medellin Zenil affirmed that Olmec monuments were carved during the Late Classic period (600-900 AD). He made this statement two decades after the second round table of the Mexican anthropology society, in which scholars agreed on placing the Olmec culture in the Preclassic period, based on...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alexander Safronov. Dmitri Beliaev. Milan Kovác.

This is an abstract from the "At the Interface the Use of Archaeology and Texts in Research" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The dynastic history of Uaxactun is one of the most ancient among the political centers of the Maya Lowlands in the Preclassic and Classic periods. The beginning of history of a dynasty concerns to the III cent. BC, and its end to the final years of the IX cent. AD. On an extent more than a thousand-year history the dynasty...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jeffrey Brzezinski. Guy Hepp.

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. A hallmark of ancient Mesoamerican art and religion is the ability of powerful ritual practitioners, sometimes referred to as “shamans,” to transform themselves. The Olmec were-jaguar is probably the best-known example of the phenomenon. However, artifacts from different regions of Mesoamerica demonstrate that this was a diverse...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alejandro Garay Herrera.

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. Classic Maya period inscriptions provide us with extensive documentation of the rituals and ceremonies that Maya elites performed as part of their royal duties. Throughout this paper we will discuss those that were overseen by women belonging to the royal houses of the polities of the Maya lowlands, which have been recorded through the images and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only William Fitzhugh. Richard Kortum.

This is an abstract from the "Steppe by Steppe: Advances in the Archaeology of Eastern Eurasia" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Petroglyph research and archaeology provide different avenues into the past. Commonly viewed as distinct disciplines, they have looked ill-suited to integration (Jacobson 2023). This specific task, however, was a focus of a National Endowment for the Humanities-supported field project conducted by East Tennessee State...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Julio Amador.

This presentation describes the process of recording and documenting the pictographs found at the site of Chalcatzingo, Morelos, in central Mexico. It shows the way in which state of the art technology is used for the first time at the site for this purpose. Iconographic analysis, landscape archaeology and the analysis of painting techniques and materials are as well employed to enrich the interpretation of rock art at the site. Upon this basis we elaborate a hypothesis about their relations...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Melinda Leach.

Prehistoric rock art increasingly is understood to be embedded in complex cultural systems of social routines, kin networks, economic landscapes, technological change, seasonal population movements, domestic and task-specific foraging behaviors, and variable gendered activities. The Holocene record of occupation and use of the High Rock Country in the Northern Great Basin provides an opportunity to explore such complex contexts of rock art. Rich lithic sources, strategic locations for hunting,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Pawel Polkowski.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Situated some 350 km from the Nile Valley, Dakhleh Oasis is considered one of the largest rock art complexes in Egypt. The petroglyphs found there were executed in various periods, beginning from the Early Holocene, through Pharaonic times, towards modernity. Often being located in the same areas, they constitute large palimpsests witnessing a long history of...