Iconography and epigraphy (Other Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Jackson.

This is an abstract from the "Crafting Culture: Thingselves, Contexts, Meanings" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The study of Classic Maya hieroglyphic writing (ca. AD 250-900, Mexico and Central America) has yielded rich understandings of texts in recent years through increasingly nuanced ways of reading, contextualizing, and interpreting hieroglyphs. Beyond examining hieroglyphic texts as culturally contextualized documentary sources, however,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kenichiro Tsukamoto.

This is an abstract from the "Regimes of the Ancient Maya" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Spatial and temporal heterogeneity of office titles and architectural styles in the Maya lowlands suggest that there existed diverse material, textual, and symbolic expressions that created, maintained, and modified regimes during the Classic period (ca. AD 250–900). The variation also signals that authority, power relations, legitimacy, and ideologies were...

DOCUMENT Citation Only D. Clark Wernecke.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Previous publication has dealt with the discovery of incised stones at the Gault Archaeological Site and the artifacts of early Paleoindian age. To date, the project has identified 146 stones with incised lines and designs on them from provenienced collections, unprovenienced collections and collections in private hands. The artifacts are on both limestone...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gabrielle Vail.

Analysis of the iconography, hieroglyphic captions, and calendrical component of the Postclassic Maya codices, believed to derive from the Northern Maya Lowlands, provides important information about their possible antecedents. Portions of the Dresden Codex, for example, suggest clear links to the mural program painted on the interior of the Los Sabios structure from the site of Xultun, Guatemala, which includes a section with detailed calculations of a lunar cycle and another that may depict a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cristina Vidal-Lorenzo. Gaspar Muñoz Cosme.

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 I" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the Late Preclassic, certain buildings in the Petén region began to incorporate complex iconographic programs on their façades. The friezes with central masks, carved in limestone and covered with layers of stucco, are particularly striking examples of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elliot Lopez-Finn.

The Postclassic Mexica maintained what Sophia and Michael Coe (2005) refer to as a "curious ambivalence" regarding cacao: despite its prevalence in everyday life as currency, the plant rarely appears in artistic programs and consumption was highly restricted via sumptuary laws that controlled social behavior. The visual scarcity of this crop extends into divine imagery – for instance, cacao remained an important aspect of Ek’ Chuah, the Postclassic Maya merchant god, but does not appear among...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jesper Nielsen. Christophe Helmke. Fiorella Fenoglio.

Ever since the first attempts to explain the close correspondences (in iconography, architecture, and writing) between Chichen Itza and Tula in the Early Postclassic it has been assumed that it was mainly between these two cities, sometimes even called "twin Tollans", that the extended and intense contact between Northern Yucatan and central Mexico took place. A tendency among Mesoamericanists not to look further to the north and west, to present states such as Guanajuato and Querétaro, have...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sandra Balanzario Granados.

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. El asentamiento prehispánico de Dzibanché, se localiza en el Sur de Quintana Roo, tiene una extensión aproximada de 60 km2, superficie que incluye las áreas destinadas a la producción de alimentos y áreas habitacionales. Dzibanché fue el asiento de la dinastía Kaanu’l, durante el periodo del...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ana García Barrios.

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. The Grolier exhibition commissioned by M. Coe in 1973 came to researchers as an inescapable reference that remains today. His studies on codex-style vessels, so defined by him, opened the door to new studies from different perspectives and approaches that are reviewed here. This study...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elizabeth Baquedano.

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. Prisoners of war were ritually killed by heart extraction and were often decapitated. Archaeologists at Templo Mayor found skulls with the first cervical vertebrae attached, indicating death by decapitation. Lethal weapons such as flint sacrificial knives were also found near decapitated...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Zachary Critchley.

This is an abstract from the "Seeing Wari through the Lens of the Everyday: Results from the Patipampa Sector of Huari" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The 2018 Patipampa excavations at Huari resulted in the discovery of a wealth of remarkable artifacts with potentially far-reaching implications for our understanding of Middle Horizon iconography, including a small bone pendant from a possible gallery space. This bone pendant was noted for a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only William Fitzhugh.

This is an abstract from the "From the Altai to the Arctic: New Results and New Directions in the Archaeology of North and Inner Asia" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Late Bronze Age Mongolian culture known for its memorial deer stones and khirigsuur burials (DSK complex), dating to 1300–700 BCE, persists over several hundred years with little change in ritual art and architecture. Deer stones are memorials to deceased leaders that display...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lourdes Budar.

El corredor costero al este de Los Tuxtlas, delimitado por los Volcanes de Santa Marta y San Martín Pajapan, el mar del Golfo de México y las Lagunas de Sontecomapan y del Ostión, es una zona que se caracterizó por la multiculturalidad y la variedad de patrones debido a la presencia de un sistema portuario que estuvo activo desde el periodo Formativo medio hasta el Clásico tardío (1200 aC-1000 dC). Así mismo, la presencia de estos elementos naturales que lo delimitan fue y sigue siendo el...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Arturo Pascual Soto.

Los gobernantes de El Tajin, aquellos pertenecientes al linaje de 13 Conejo, convirtieron al Conjunto Arquitectónico de el Edificio de las Columnas en la sede del poder político y religioso de la ciudad. Su autoridad se dejó sentir en buena parte de la llanura costera y en las montañas de Puebla y Veracruz. Tláloc se había convertido en númen de la clase política local y el culto al gobernante giraba en torno a esta deidad inmemorial. La ponencia explora el papel que tuvieron las divinidades...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Richard Burger. Lucy Salazar.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. During the 2018 field season, the authors unearthed a portion of a large polychrome frieze at the U-shaped civic-ceremonial center of Cardal in the Lurin Valley of Peru. This talk provides a brief description of the excavations and its discovery. The frieze was located on the lower terrace of the right arm of the platform complex and was buried by the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Virginia Miller.

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. The ritual use and display of skulls, digits, and femurs is well documented in Mesoamerica. But except for the heart, few sources describe how organs and soft body tissues were curated during the brief time they could been have been viable for manipulation or display. Nevertheless, there is rich...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Stauffer.

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. At the 75th annual meeting of the Society of American Archaeology, Claudine Payne proposed that Lake Jackson’s Mound 3 served as a repository for ritual heirlooms that could no longer be used in the manners their creators intended. This paper revives her hypothesis to examine the role of this archaeological context at the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Maria Guagnin. Angela Perri.

The UNESCO world heritage sites of Shuwaymis and Jubbah, in northwestern Saudi Arabia, are extremely rich in early Holocene rock art. Hunting scenes illustrate dog-assisted hunting strategies from the 7th and possibly the 8th millennium BC, predating the spread of pastoralism. The engravings represent the earliest evidence for dogs on the Arabian Peninsula. Though the depicted dogs are reminiscent of the modern Canaan dog, it is unclear if they were brought to the Arabian Peninsula from the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kim Richter. María Eugenia Maldonado Vite.

Pre-Columbian Huastec stone sculptures and clay figurines for the most part have been interpreted as deities and assumed to belong to the same religious cult. They also have typically been interpreted through a central Mexican lens and been identified as and associated with Late Postclassic central Mexican deities. Female figures in particular have been interpreted as Tlazolteotl, the central Mexican goddess of parturition, sexuality, and purification—a deity thought to be closely related to the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Wendy Bacon.

Although scholars of Classic Maya art have described certain short-statured figures as dwarves and endowed them with mystical significance, the motif has gone undefined. This contextual analysis identifies the anatomical and cultural attributes of the dwarf motif and interprets its meaning within the ancient Maya conception of time and their ideological integration of the natural and supernatural. A spatial analysis of 45 depictions of short-statured individuals on archaeologically provenienced...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cecelia Klein.

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. All sixteen birds carved on the sides of the Platform of the Eagles and Jaguars at Chichen Itza have been traditionally identified as eagles. Because each pair of birds flanks a large relief of a seated jaguar holding a heart, it has been assumed in the past that the platform celebrated military orders like...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Morgan Clark.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. More than mere accessories, the earflares that ancient Maya peoples donned were essential. Nothing indicates this more than the fact that their ornamental use was not limited ears; indeed, elite bodies dripped with them. Stelae from Tikal and Cobá depict rulers with long strings of them around their necks. Some earflares, as with an example from Pomona, are...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Catharina Santasilia.

This is an abstract from the "Mesoamerican Figurines in Context. New Insights on Tridimensional Representations from Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Early Formative site of Tlatilco, has like so many other ancient sites, been covered by modern-day urbanization. Many of these sites suffered a fate of early exploitation and looting leaving the archaeologists with puzzles that often lack many pieces. With resilience and patience, and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Edgar Carpio.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Known as "The Red Devil" or the "Muñeco", a rock painting in Olmec style, located in the municipality of Amatitlán, department of Guatemala. This was reported at the end of the 70s of the last century and has been visited on numerous occasions by various specialists. In this paper we will present a synthesis of its discovery and the investigations carried out,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Arturo Pascual Soto.

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. Si bien el culto al soberano no podría expresar de mejor manera el carácter sagrado que se le confería de antiguo y el extraordinario poder que se concentraba en su persona, es en El Tajín cuando evoluciona sobre las bases de una ideología de reciente introducción hacia una liturgia ligada a una tradición cultural que en el Epiclásico...