Social and Political Organization (Other Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erica Ivins. Colin Quinn. Horia Ciugudean. Gabriel Balan. Lacey Carpenter.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The abandonment of mortuary spaces is an intentional social process. As a political act, the choice to abandon a cemetery is a moment in which communities manipulate memory. Most mortuary studies, however, often overlook the social processes that led to cemetery abandonment. This poster presents the results of Bayesian analyses of radiocarbon dates from...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Simon Martin.

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. Maya inscriptions have long been considered an impoverished source on the momentous changes that gripped society at the close of the Classic era. Not only do we see a steep decline in quantity as major centers fall silent, but the texts that were produced...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ian Jones.

This is an abstract from the "New Work in Medieval Archaeology, Part 1: Landscapes, Food, and Health" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. From 1992 to 2002, the Humayma Excavation Project investigated a fairly modest palatial structure dubbed Field F103 at the site of al-Ḥumayma in southern Jordan. Early on, the excavators recognized that this structure should be identified as the qasr and mosque complex described in Arabic historical sources as having...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Maria Belen Mendez Bauer. Verónica Vázquez López. Takeshi Inomata. Daniela Triadan.

This is an abstract from the "Aguada Fénix and the Middle Usumacinta Region: Interregional Interactions and Social Transformations in the Middle Preclassic Period" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Among the many Middle Preclassic sites in the Middle Usumacinta region, Aguada Fénix is, by far, the largest and possibly one of the oldest. A large, rectangular platform was built at its center, measuring 1,400 × 400 m. The construction of this artificial...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrew Malhotra.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A general trend among many societies has been the growth of political complexes, and thereby alliance formation. New studies on the Monongahela culture, such as those undertaken by Dr. William Johnson and David Anderson (2002), seek to define the growing political complexity of the Monongahela during the Late Monongahela period (A.D. 1580-1635). This research...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jaime Awe. Christophe Helmke.

This is an abstract from the "Making and Breaking Boundaries in the Maya Lowlands: Alliance and Conflict across the Guatemala–Belize Border" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Investigations at Xunantunich indicate that this important site in the Belize River Valley, rose rapidly to regional prominence during the Late Classic Hats’ Chaak Phase (AD 670 – 780). While the social, political, and economic reasons for this late and rapid rise are still not...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kasia Szremski.

Understanding the political organization of Late Intermediate Period (1000 – 1470 CE) societies along the central coast of Peru has remained challenging. The urban/proto-urban settlements that are characteristic of groups like the Chancay, Ichma, and the Chinca (among others) have been interpreted as material manifestations of elite power, however, many of these societies don’t fit traditional models of chiefdoms or states. Using a combination of ethnohistoric data, settlement pattern analysis,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Xiangming Dai.

Taosi is one of the largest sites surrounded by the huge fortification during the late Neolithic in the middle Yellow River valley. So far the archaeologists have excavated a large cemetery, and uncovered a number of burials at Taosi. These burials can be divided into a few categories based on their scale, structure and grave goods, representing the different social ranks. The cemetery consists of several sections, which represent the different social groups. During the early Longshan period,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only George J. Micheletti.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ritual and its practice were essential mechanisms for negotiating social identity, status, and political involvement for all members of ancient Maya society. Yet, changes to ritual practices through time are often framed around the legitimization of royal elite, reifying traditional models of dominant ideology. Identifying how ritual of periphery...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stephen Dueppen.

This is an abstract from the "Essential Contributions from African to Global Archaeology" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The archaeology and ethnohistory of western Burkina Faso provide myriad insights into the ways that social and political identities can be simultaneously strong, anchored, and flexible: communities can be simultaneously autonomous, connected, and engaged in collective action; and hierarchies can exist while being extensively...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lisa DeLance. Jaime Awe.

Archaeologists working in Mesoamerica frequently encounter construction fill within architecture. Construction fill has been variously used as a tool for determining architectural construction sequences, as a resource for seriation dating, and occasionally as a context for radiocarbon deposits. Although much information can be gleaned from examining construction fill, material culture found within such fill is frequently mentioned in passing as little more than refuse, if it is mentioned at...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Whitney Lytle.

This is an abstract from the "The Preclassic Landscape in the Mopan Valley, Belize" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ancestor veneration was a cornerstone for Maya social organization and vital to the maintenance of hierarchy. As the Maya became more politically and socially complex, ritual practices involving ancestors also rose in complexity. Critical to the concept of ancestors is the recognition of the bond between ancestors and spaces. This...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Itzamara Ixta. David Chicoine.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This poster reports on the results of archaeological excavations carried out at the ancient human settlement of Cerro San Isidro located in the Moro region of the middle Nepeña Valley, north central coast of Peru. In particular, we expose and analyze stratigraphic, architectural, and material data recovered in the unidad de excavación 5 (UE5) at the East...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Miguel Guillermo Ortiz Mestanza.

This is an abstract from the "Chavín de Huántar’s Contribution to Understanding the Central Andean Formative: Results and Perspectives" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. La forma final del sitio de Chavín de Huántar se estableció fundamentalmente en la llamada etapa Blanco y Negro definida por Kembel. Hay allí elementos de la arquitectura y del paisaje que son indicios de algún programa de reestructuración social en clave de una renovada...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Carpenter. Guadalupe Sanchez Miranda.

There is little doubt that there exists cultural continuity linking the Río Sonora tradition and the Ópata (a term referring to an amalgamation of several groups, generally including Eudeve, Teguima and Jova-cf. Yetman 2010; Spicer 1962). The socio-political organization of the late prehispanic Rio Sonora archaeological tradition remains controversial though little studied. Carroll Riley (1982, 1987, 1999, 2005; see also Doolittle 1984, 1988, 2008) proposed that they constitute "statelets",...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Justin Walsh. Alice Gorman.

This is an abstract from the "Archaeology Out-of-the-Box: Investigating the Edge of the Discipline" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The practice of archaeology in outer space seems as far "outside the box" as it is possible for the discipline to go. There are major challenges to carrying out field research in off-Earth contexts – among them, remoteness, hostile conditions, cost, and the demonstrable bias of space agencies against the social...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nicole Grigg.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. As the United States redeveloped restrictions on birthright and naturalized citizenship over the late nineteenth century, Washington, DC, served as a testing ground even though none of its residents held full citizenship because they lived in the city. Depending on the issue at stake, definitions of good citizenship increasingly integrated private...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tatiana Zelenetskaya Young.

Political leaders among the ancient Maya were actors performing for an audience with the intent to receive the people’s support to govern. These actors often used specific architecture as stages for their performances; therefore, this architecture serves as a source of information on various aspects of political organization. Architecture embodies political symbolism and has the potential to communicate type of political institution. This paper examines the distribution of architecture that...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lourdes Budar. Gibrann Becerra.

This is an abstract from the "Regional and Intensive Site Survey: Case Studies from Mesoamerica" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Desde el año 2008 arqueólogos de la Universidad Veracruzana han realizado el estudio sistemático del corredor costero que se encuentra en la parte noreste de Los Tuxtlas. Bajo cobertura total del terreno, se ha recorrido una extensión de 300 km2, desde la Laguna de Sontecomapan al norte, hasta la Laguna del Ostión al sur,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jana Veleminska. Jan Dupej. Jaroslav Bruzek. Lumir Polacek. Petr Veleminsky.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. According to the archaeological and written sources Great Moravian Medieval society was highly socially stratified. Recorded differences in facial cranial morpholology were partly interpreted as a result of different masticatory load, and thus of different dietary habits in various socioeconomic classes. In this study we present a detailed analysis of cranial...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alba Tellez-Nieto. Joshua Englehardt.

This is an abstract from the "Regional and Intensive Site Survey: Case Studies from Mesoamerica" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. La sierra norte de Hidalgo no está bien documentada arqueológicamente, a pesar de su ubicación entre dos esferas culturales mayores del Postclásico: el señorío de Metztitlán y la Huasteca. Este trabajo busca llenar esta laguna del conocimiento, con dos metas principales: identificar la organización sociopolítica de los...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael L. Loughlin. Christopher Pool.

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. Although ballgame paraphernalia and figurines depicting ballgame players have been reported from Tres Zapotes and other nearby sites since the 1930s, the identification of ballcourts in the Eastern Lower Papaloapan Basin (ELPB) has been elusive. At Tres Zapotes, the areas between mounds and in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dmitri Beliaev. Alexandre Tokovinine. Milan Kovác.

During the 2017 field season of the Uaxactun Archaeological project new monument was excavated at Buena Vista, a minor center at Uaxactun urban periphery. It is a small carved altar or ballcourt marker, which according to its style dates to the Early Classic. High quality of the carving and the hieroglyphic inscription indicates that the altar/marker itself was a part of the monumental corpus of Uaxactun urban core; uncomplete text provides important new information on the dynastic history of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only George Lau. Milton Luján.

This is an abstract from the "After the Feline Cult: Social Dynamics and Cultural Reinvention after Chavín" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent field investigations at the hilltop site of Pashash clarify key diachronic changes during the rise of segmentary lordships in the Pallasca highlands of northern Ancash, Peru. Ceramic, radiocarbon, architectural, and ancillary contextual evidence help to reveal local cultural patterns tracking the Pashash...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Thatcher Seltzer-Rogers.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Whereas archaeologists continue to investigate processes of culture contact and frontier construction in hunter-gatherer and small agricultural societies using models primarily originally created and applied for ancient states and modern geopolitics, historians have recently begun investigating Indigenous borderlands. My dissertation, which includes the...