Iconography and epigraphy (Other Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stephanie Strauss.

This is an abstract from the "Beyond Maize and Cacao: Reflections on Visual and Textual Representation and Archaeological Evidence of Other Plants in Precolumbian Mesoamerica" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Verdant signs abound in the writing systems of ancient Mesoamerica. Hieroglyphic records of abundance, germination, and rebirth ground ritual speech in agricultural metaphors. A robust iconography of vegetal growth reflects both the natural...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Caitlin Earley.

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. Rollout images of Maya vases and the database developed by Justin and Barbara Kerr allowed unfettered access to Classic Maya depictions of tribute, palace life, and mythic history. The Kerr Archive also brought into focus marching warriors and captured enemies, some of them...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ruth Musser-Lopez.

Though routine interaction may not have been the case, the Fremont were a part of the iconic world of the Virgin (Anasazi) Puebloan people who occupied southeastern Nevada north of Las Vegas in Evergreen Flats, 75 miles northwest the Lower Colorado River’s north end bend. Within that region is Petroglyph Corral visually demonstrating Puebloan people at a Fremont fringe area where the two cultures may have competed, collided or even collapsed into one another and the more recent Numic tribes. ...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrea Vazquez De Arthur.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. For ancient civilizations with no form of writing, proper iconographic interpretation is an important tool for accessing the past. This is certainly true of ancient Andean civilizations, especially the Wari who produced some of the most captivating visual imagery of their time. However, Wari depictions of supernatural composite figures are so stylized that...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nelda Issa Marengo.

En Mesoamérica las representaciones gráficas sobre guerra, violencia y conflicto, son una constante que se encuentran en diversos sitios y en diferentes periodos. Para el Epiclásico (650-900 A.D) en el centro de México, y para el Clásico Tardío/ Terminal (600-900 A.D) en el área Maya, esta temática comienza a presentar cambios, tiende a ser más explícita y a compartir algunos elementos entre sitios contemporáneos. Chichén Itzá floreció durante este momento de cambios y muestra de ello es la...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alexander Safronov.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The last quarter of the seventh century was marked by the intensification of military and political struggle in the Ususmasinta Basin. Loss of control over the Western Lowlands by Kaanu’l power at this time led to wars between the largest political centers of the region—Piedras Negras, Palenque, Yaxchilan, Tonina, and Saktz’i. The Lacandon Selva (Chiapas...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Eugenia Robinson. Marlen Garnica. Sorayya Carr.

This is an abstract from the "Interdisciplinary Approaches to Rock Art Documentation, Research, and Analysis" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. La Casa de las Golondrinas is a Mesoamerican sacred rock art and pilgrimage site located in the southern end of the Antigua Valley in the central highlands of Guatemala near water sources and routes of travel. Recently, mapping efforts have found that the natural site, 500 m long, was culturally structured...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gyles Iannone. Pyiet Phyo Kyaw. Nyien Chan Soe. Saw Tun Lynn. Scott Macrae.

The IRAW@Bagan project is aimed at developing an integrated socio-ecological history for residential patterning, agricultural practices, and water management at the Medieval Burmese (Bama) capital of Bagan, Myanmar (11th to 14th century CE). As part of this long-term research program investigations have been initiated on the Tuyin-Thetso mountain range, located 11.25 km southeast of Bagan’s walled and moated epicenter. This upland area figures prominently in the chronicles of early Bagan, and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lauren Lippiello.

Shared iconography and similar functionality associated with dated depictions of Predynastic watercraft and terrestrial shrines identify watercraft as the earliest manifestation of manufactured sacred space in Egypt. The resulting Mobile Sacred Space Paradigm describes watercraft as ritual objects (liminal negotiators) empowered to move through and, thereby, connect three ecologically distinctive landscapes as early as the Naqada IIB Period (and possibly Naqada IC). Results indicate that...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrew D. Turner.

In a myth that provided a charter for Mexica domination of Central Mexico, the deity Huitzilopochtli defeated his foes with a spear-thrower in the form of a fire serpent, or Xiuhcoatl. While Huitzilopochtli was a being unique to the Mexica, the Xiuhcoatl is generally considered to derive from an earlier entity referred to as the Teotihuacan War Serpent. Although the influence of Teotihuacan symbolism on later cultures of Central Mexico is undeniable, the portrayal of solar deities with...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gerardo Gutiérrez. Mary E. Pye.

In this paper, we address the role of leaders and their communities during the performance of ceremonies associated with rain petition in a network of caves located in the Mixtec-Tlapanec-Nahua region of Eastern Guerrero. We present newly discovered archaeological evidence in the caves of Pozo de Muerto, Casa de la Lluvia, Cauadzidziqui, Juxtlahuaca and Gobernadores de Techan, as well as ethnographic analogy to shed new light on the use of caves as arenas of ritual and political performance from...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Melinda Martin.

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. Mississippian cosmologies were inextricably entangled with the sacred environment and landscape, often materialized through iconographic imagery and motifs. One example of such interwoven relationships may be seen in the imagery of other-than human beings; that is, preternaturals who control and often...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Morgan Clark.

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. This paper investigates the relationship between Classic Maya text, imagery, and genre when quoted speech is introduced. Quotes can be attributed to speakers through “speech scrolls,” the quotative evidential particle, or the verb meaning “say.” When the latter two are used, they...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Claudia Garcia-Des Lauriers.

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. Teotihuacan is a complex multiethnic urban metropolis whose history is slowly becoming more nuanced after more than 100 years of research. Despite the recent attention that this Mesoamerican city has received, we still have many questions, among them, about the role of women, their life histories, their identities, and their role in the ritual...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ángel Sánchez Gamboa. Esther Parpal Cabanes.

This is an abstract from the "Recent Archaeological Investigations in Chiapas, Mexico" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. New hieroglyphic and iconographic evidence allows us to preliminary reconstruct women’s political hierarchy inside Tonina’s royal court during the Late Classic period. As it is well known, parentage statements are very scarce in the inscriptions of Tonina and limited to maternal ancestry. Aside from the importance of local female...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erica Hill.

Moche iconography depicts women in ritual roles as priestesses, objects of sacrifice, and possibly as deities; however, the roles of ordinary women have received much less attention from archaeologists. This paper explores the nature of women’s power in Moche society as represented in iconography and as inferred from bioarchaeological data, contrasting the roles of women in elite and non-elite contexts. With the exception of elite women performing rituals, Moche ideology inextricably linked...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Charles Cheek.

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. Dress is an important way people interact with others. Modern concepts of dress include the entire body and how people adorn or change it. Maya rituals use specific sets of dress elements to convey not only what is happening but also to ensure the ritual was done correctly. After a brief review of women’s dress, I identify dress in ritual and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jason Kennedy.

This is an abstract from the "Raise Your Glass to the Past: An Exploration of the Archaeology of Beer" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The archaeology of beer has received significant attention in the last three decades. However, many studies focus on the special role that beer played in sumptuous prestige feasts and for conducting commensal politics with an emphasis on elite motivations. In this paper, I view the production of beer as a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Oswaldo Chinchilla.

This is an abstract from the "A Celebration and Critical Assessment of "The Maya Scribe and His World" on its Fiftieth Anniversary" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. An enduring contribution of “The Maya Scribe and His World” was Michael Coe’s call for attention to the Popol Wuj as a source for the interpretation of ancient Maya deities. Developed in subsequent works, this approach has yielded important insights on ancient Maya art and religion, and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Luisa Esther Diaz Arriola.

This paper presents the results of a typology and iconographic analysis made on ceramic and textiles artifacts recovered at the Ychsma settlement of Armatambo. The Ychsma cultural affiliation of this archaeological site, which is located on a dense urban area south of Lima, is recognized in the literature (especially with the aerial photographs published by Kosok in 1965) but little detail has been published on the evidence of its affiliation and character of occupation. We can confirm that...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jesse Dalton. F. Kent Reilly III.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The iconographic corpus of the Taino cultures has been the focus of recent scholarship, yet as a whole remains understudied within Caribbean archaeology. Scholars in the past attempted to demonstrably link the Taino to the Late Postclassic Maya with limited success. However, Yucatecan influences are evident within the spatial layout of Taino ceremonial...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ellen Hoobler.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The precolumbian site of Monte Albán in Oaxaca, southern Mexico, presents a continuing challenge for scholars because the earliest scientific excavations at the site, conducted in the 1930s by noted archaeologist Alfonso Caso and his collaborators, were only partially published. This is particularly disappointing since many of the tombs of Monte Alban were...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alice Diaz.

The Zooanthropomorphic beings present on some artifacts of the cultural areas Tairona (Colombia), Gran Coclé (Panama) and Gran Chiriqui (Costa Rica) dating back to pre-Columbian times have often been identified as shamans. But what are the iconographic elements that are in favor of such a precise interpretation? To begin with, we did a thorough iconographical analysis aiming to determine taxonomically the animal component, the ratio between human and animal, and the precise anatomical elements...