Social and Political Organization (Other Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nigel Chang.

This is an abstract from the "Paradigms Shift: New Interpretations in Mainland Southeast Asian Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Prehistory is made up of individuals and families going about their daily lives. Surely, no one in NE Thailand 3000 years ago was thinking deeply about how to craft a ‘state’ from small semi-agricultural villages. However, it can also be argued that large scale social and technological change and Asia-wide...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dewei Shen.

Processed from turtle shells and bovid scapulae, oracle bones were massively exploited by the ruling house of the late Shang Dynasty for divination. As opposed to traditional scholarship that holds primary interest in inscriptions engraved on these bones, I consider late Shang divination in entirety as a technological process that proceeds from the preparation and delivery of bone material via tributary networks all the way to bones’ after-use discard into pits. By switching the attention to the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Billie Follensbee.

Recent research has re-identified certain enigmatic Gulf Coast Olmec greenstone artifacts as elite versions of textile-making tools. These artifacts, which include Middle Formative picks, figural celts, clamshell and plaque pendants, and objects designated as "spoons," were likely used by elites as both functional objects and high-status adornment, as illustrated in the contemporary sculpture. Most examples of these artifacts are found in caches and graves of distant and/or later civilizations,...

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 Jonathan Micon. Jennifer Birch. Louis Lesage.

This is an abstract from the "Kin, Clan, and House: Social Relatedness in the Archaeology of North American Societies" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this paper, we consider how institutions of social relatedness played crucial roles in Huron-Wendat society and how categories of biological and fictive kinship (e.g., lineages, clans, nations) structured processes of social integration, political affiliation, and adoption. We argue that...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dorie Reents-Budet. Ronald L. Bishop. Christophe Helmke. Julie Hoggarth.

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. Painted and carved pictorial pottery of the Classic Maya (250-850 CE) served primarily as ostentatious serving vessels at feasts and other principal celebrations. The vessels were masterful creations by accomplished artisans and are, for the most part, individualistic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only William Parkinson. Attila Gyucha. Richard Yerkes.

The Körös Regional Archaeological Project was established in 1998 as a collaborative, multidisciplinary, research project focused on the later prehistory of the Körös region on the Great Hungarian Plain in the Carpathian Basin. Over the last two decades, the project has attempted to build upon the success of previous ambitious projects in the region by emphasizing not only the collaborative nature of the research endeavor but also by incorporating a robust training component into the project. In...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anna Roosevelt.

Rarely does the New World a thropological literature mention the existence of large centralized, multi-unit fired clay cooking structures of some prehistoric or recent indigenous Amazonian households. Yet these large, highly patterned features have been informative for archaeology from several points of view. Their existence and common presence as permanent structures built into the floors of prehistoric mound sites on Marajo Island have demonstrated that the mounds they occur in had sizeable,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christina Sampson.

In the past, as in the present, political-economic relationships occur at multiple social scales: for instance, we recognize regional relationships of dominance or tribute, degrees of dependence or rivalry between trading partner communities, and patterns of collaboration or competition between neighboring households. Enduring inequalities may become established at any of these levels at different times. This paper will discuss the local organization of residential communities in the context of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sheila Savage. Scott Hammerstedt. Amanda Regnier.

Beginning around 1100 CE, residents of the eastern Oklahoma Arkansas River drainage built mounds, shared elaborate mortuary rituals, and on some level participated in a maize-based agricultural system. These aspects of the broader Mississippian pattern were centered at Spiro Mounds. Beginning in 1300 CE, people began abandoning the mound sites on the margins of the Southern Plains. As climate conditions worsened in the fifteenth century, the residents of the Arkansas drainage adopted Plains...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Eva Lemonnier. Julien Hiquet. Julien Sion.

This is an abstract from the "The Urban Question: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Investigating the Ancient Mesoamerican City" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeological investigations carried out since 2011 at the site of Naachtun provide series of data useful to draw with sufficient details, the historical trajectory of this Maya Classic regional capital located between Tikal and Calakmul. Starting its development with the construction of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jessica Munson.

This is an abstract from the "People and Space: Defining Communities and Neighborhoods with Social Network Analysis" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent studies using network analysis in archaeology seek to understand the interactions and structures that defined past societies. Such approaches are based on graph theoretic models that are simplifications of reality used to conceptualize and describe relationships, either qualitatively or...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Laura Swantek.

This is an abstract from the "Mediterranean Archaeology: Connections, Interactions, Objects, and Theory" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Complex social networks or social complexity emerges from the actions and interactions of people as they pass information, goods and services. During the Bronze Age in the Mediterranean, particularly on the island of Cyprus, it has been hypothesized that two actions and interactions are particularly important for...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jocelyne Ponce. Marcello Canuto. Tomás Barrientos.

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. Over two dozen hieroglyphic panels looted in the 1960s from the site of La Corona, formerly known as “Site Q,” ended up in private collections around the globe. Some of these panels are featured in the Grolier Catalog. While the monuments have provided extensive information on the role...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kristin Landau. Christopher Hernandez. Nancy Gonlin.

This is an abstract from the "After Dark: The Nocturnal Urban Landscape & Lightscape of Ancient Cities" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. As the sun set on the horizon, ancient city dwellers would have felt the cooler air, heard cicadas’ songs, and perhaps tasted a late-night snack. Their vision, however, would have suffered the most as dusk turned to night and some form of illumination was necessary to see others, carry on activities, or get to bed....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Richard Edwards. Robert Jeske.

Population aggregation and shifts in material culture of the Late Prehistoric Eastern Woodlands (AD900-1100) has often been linked to the increase in the importance of maize in the human diet. In the Midwest, the development of distinct contemporaneous archaeological cultures (e.g., Oneota, Langford and Middle Mississippian) has often been connected to assumed differences in maize consumption. A commonly used model is that increased complexity in social structures result from, and/or are...

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...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christopher Shephard.

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. This paper explores the relationship between the human body and the objects that adorned them within the Late Woodland through early colonial (AD 900–1680) Algonquian Chesapeake. Drawing on theories that cite the human body as the battle ground upon which political authority is established, I seek to explore...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kodiak Aracena.

This is an abstract from the "Navigating Imperialism: Negotiated Communities and Landscapes of the Inka Provinces" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. La anexión de otros grupos culturales fue una estrategia sociopolítica recurrente de la política incaica durante el siglo XV. Dichas estrategias tendían a variar según la ubicación, las características de los grupos humanos, y el tipo de la relación de éstos con el Incario. Mediante la investigación para...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Chatelain.

Excavations at minor centers provide us not only with a wealth of information about those sites, but they can also illuminate sociopolitical shifts over time within the broader region. The minor center of La Cariba, located four kilometers southwest of La Corona, has been investigated since 2009. A broad dataset including architectural, epigraphic, osteological, and artifactual evidence has provided a detailed narrative of political and demographic changes over a millennium at La Cariba. The...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Brown. Mark D. Willis. Chester P. Walker.

This is an abstract from the "Towards a Standardization of Photogrammetric Methods in Archaeology: A Conversation about 'Best Practices' in An Emerging Methodology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Since 2007 our team has been conducting low level aerial reconnaissance in the northern highlands of Ecuador, a challenging environment with low air pressure, frequent high winds, misting rain, and rapidly alternating intense sun and enveloping low lying...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jacob Lulewicz.

The scale and structure of the relationships through which social capital is generated, amassed, and controlled must be understood if we are to evaluate the emergence and evolution of organizationally complex social, political, and economic institutions. At any one point in time however, actors or entities are undoubtedly embedded and engaged in a number of distinct, yet overlapping, relational fields. In this paper I interrogate three networks, representing three separate sets of relationships,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Matthew Brown.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper presents preliminary results from excavations at the Formative (2200 BCE–200 CE) site of Muyumoqo in the Chitapampa Basin, Cusco, Peru. A systematic survey of the Cusco Basin and surrounding regions raised several questions about Muyumoqo’s role in the local economy and its relation to polities forming during the Late Formative. Results from the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Zoe Rawski.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Over the last decade, the Mopan Valley Preclassic Project has extensively investigated the Preclassic ceremonial center of Early Xunantunich, Belize. These excavations have yielded significant information regarding the construction of monumental architecture during the Middle and Late Preclassic periods, as well as data regarding early ritual activities and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kirby Farah.

Immediately after the consolidation of the Aztec Empire, Itzcoatl, the king of Tenochtitlan, ordered the destruction of the ancient codices from newly incorporated territories. By erasing these alternative histories, Itzcoatl paved the way for the construction of an official imperial history that bolstered the political aims of Aztec leaders. Nearly a century later, a second wave of erasures occurred when Spanish conquerors destroyed indigenous books and idols in an effort to eradicate...