Social and Political Organization (Other Keyword)
101-125 (261 Records)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Immigrant Chinese workers represented the dominant work force in the construction of the Central Pacific Railroad (1863-1869). The archaeological record they left behind provides an important snapshot of the lives of these largely male work camps in the isolated desert of northwestern Utah. Funded by the National Park Service’s Underrepresented Community...
Farms of Hunters: Medieval Norse Settlement, Land- and Sea-Use in Low Arctic Greenland (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Norse that settled in Greenland between c. AD 985-1450 depended greatly on the harvesting of local to regional Arctic marine resources for both subsistence and oversees trade. However, the mechanics and organization around this important marine economy have only left a limited imprint in the archaeological record, which is dominated by evidence of...
The Formation of Agro-pastoral Communities in the Chanka Heartland (Andahuaylas, Peru) (2018)
This paper examines how Late Intermediate Period or Chanka phase (~AD 1000-1400) communities were formed during a period of overlapping social and environmental risks in the Chanka heartland of Andahuaylas. In particular, the paper considers how aggregated hilltop communities formed and functioned under new social and economic conditions. Recent archaeological research from Andahuaylas suggests that the majority of aggregated Chanka phase ridgetop sites were likely inhabited by neither...
Fragments of Identity: A Comparative Study of Terminal Formative Figurines from Coastal Oaxaca, MX (2018)
The Terminal Formative period (150BCE-250CE) in Coastal Oaxaca, Mexico was a time of urbanization and increasing political interaction. The Terminal Formative included the emergence of an urban center at the site of Río Viejo, which may have extended political influence over surrounding communities. During this period, on the coast of Oaxaca, ceramic figurines were a ubiquitous medium for expression and identity in political/cultural exchanges. By comparing ceramic figurines from the site of Rio...
From Collective Government to Communal Inebriation in Ancient Teotihuacan, Central Mexico (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A simulation model of Teotihuacan’s hypothetical collective government has shown that a highly distributed network of leaders could have been effective at ensuring social coordination in the city by means of consensus formation. The model makes a strong prediction: it indicates that this collective mode of government would have been most effective in...
From Cooperation to Competition: An Architectural Energetics Analysis of Labor Organization for the Construction of Circle 2 at Los Guachimontones, Jalisco, Mexico (2018)
The Teuchitlán culture is one of many cultures in West Mexico during the Late Formative to Classic periods (300 B.C. – 450/500 AD) that share in the tradition of burying some of their dead in shaft and chamber tombs. The Teuchitlán culture is noteworthy among their contemporaries for the large number of circular ceremonial buildings concentrated around the Tequila volcano and surrounding valleys. Los Guachimontones, located on the southern side of the volcano, is the largest site in the region...
From Hohokam Archaeology to Narratives of the Ancient Hawaiian ‘State’ (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Why Platform Mounds? Part 2: Regional Comparisons and Tribal Histories" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Interpreting the political economies of early complex societies that lacked texts is a profoundly difficult challenge for anthropological archaeology. Such models compel archaeologists to examine material evidence of agricultural intensification, community organization, craft specialization, monumental construction,...
From Ritual to Domestic in a Shifting Political Landscape: Excavations in the Coronitas Group at La Corona, Guatemala (2018)
Archaeological and epigraphic evidence from the Coronitas Group at La Corona, Guatemala provides an opportunity to examine responses to changing sociopolitical conditions among the Classic Maya (AD 250-900). Architectural and material evidence suggests that the Coronitas Group was a locus of ritual and ceremonial activities by the royal court throughout the Classic period. Burials of important individuals and other ceremonial activities imply that it was a place of significant ancestral ties. At...
From Topography to Temporality at the Valencina Copper Age Mega-site (Spain): Low-Density Settlement, Gathering Place, or Both? (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Theorizing Prehistoric Large Low-Density Settlements beyond Urbanism and Other Conventional Classificatory Conventions" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the last two decades, mega-sites have become a defining feature in the research of Copper Age Iberia, opening up completely new avenues for the analysis of early social complexity in this region. One of the most fascinating cases is the Valencina de la...
Genetic Variation and Sociocultural Dynamics in Two Early Christian Cemeteries from Kulubnarti (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Ancient DNA in Service of Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Skeletal remains from two contemporaneous Early Christian Period (550–800 CE) cemeteries at Kulubnarti in Sudanese Nubia have been the subject of a decades-long biocultural research program. Craniometric and dental analyses have suggested biological similarity between members of the "R" and "S" cemetery communities, while analyses of health and...
GINI and the Indigenous Critique: Dynamics of Equality and Inequality in Eastern North America (2023)
This is an abstract from the "To Have and Have Not: A Progress Report on the Global Dynamics of Wealth Inequality (GINI) Project" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this paper we utilize the systemic, empirically driven methodology developed by the Global Dynamics of Wealth Inequality (GINI) project in order to evaluate and compare differences in wealth accumulation for Indigenous eastern North American societies. These societies were predominantly...
The Great Houses of the Mesa Verde Cuesta (2018)
The Mesa Verde uplift has long been noted for its relative lack of great houses, notwithstanding its geographic position between Aztec and the Great Sage Plain. The notable exception has been Farview House, which has great house attributes, but not all regional archaeologists have agreed that it qualified as one. Yet, the Chaco period (950-1150 CE, also known as the Pueblo II period) was of the densest periods of occupation on the Mesa Verde uplift, which at that time also had a higher...
Greeks in the Mountains: New Insights on the Landscapes of Ancient Greek ‘Colonization’ in Calabria, Southern Italy (2018)
This paper investigates the political and economic landscapes of Greek ‘colonization’, using as a case study the upland and lowland landscapes investigated by survey and excavation by the Bova Marina Archaeological Project. The study region lies between two neighbouring ancient Greek city-states, Rhegion and Locri Epizephyrii, established in the late 8th-7th century BCE. Ancient classical texts present a picture of deep, long-term hostility between them, as well as with the indigenous...
Green Acres: The Valle de Yaxhom and Puuc Prehistory (2024)
This is an abstract from the "The Bolonchen Regional Archaeological Project: 25 Years of Research in the Puuc" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. It has long been recognized that the two principal physiographic subdivisions of the Puuc are the wedge-shaped Valle de Sta. Elena, just south of the Puuc escarpment, and to its south, the Bolonchen Hill District. One goal of the PARB project was to explore the eastern manifestations of these two regions for...
Heart of an Ancient Maya City: Investigations of the Central E Group at Yaxnohcah, Campeche, Mexico (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ancient Maya E Groups were important loci of sociopolitical continuity, sociocultural change, and social memory across millennia of lowland Maya civilization. As sustained generational foci of sociopolitical machinations and social memory, the built environment and significance of E Groups would have been continuously generationally reformulated to meet...
A Hierarchical Bayesian Approach for Estimating Gini Coefficients from House Floor Area: A Case Study from Prehistoric Japan (2023)
This is an abstract from the "To Have and Have Not: A Progress Report on the Global Dynamics of Wealth Inequality (GINI) Project" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Robust quantitative measures of wealth inequality are pivotal for investigating long-term social and economic changes from a comparative perspective. Notwithstanding criticisms on its reliability as a proxy of wealth inequality, the application of Gini coefficients on house size data has...
Historias de pukaras: Trayectorias locales y diversidad en dos asentamientos de la precordillera del Desierto de Atacama durante el Período Intermedio Tardío y Tardío (900-1532 dC) (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Abordamos el fenómeno de los pukara durante los períodos Intermedio Tardío y Tardío (900-1532 dC) en la región de Tarapacá del Norte Grande de Chile, a partir del registro arquitectónico y cerámico de dos pukara ubicados en una misma localidad en la precordillera del Desierto de Atacama. Estos asentamientos muestran usos y formas de habitar con...
Historic Evidence of Social, Economic, and Gender Issues at Petrified Forest National Park: Variability in the Archaeological Signature of Historic Homesteads (2018)
The archaeological "wealth" in Petrified Forest National Park (PEFO) of Northeastern Arizona is not isolated to the well-known Ancestral Puebloan populations, but similarly includes Historic peoples. The westward expansion of the late 19th and early 20th centuries in Northern Arizona represents a time of clashing cultures and a period of uncertainty combined with untold risks and rewards. Along the Rio Puerco in and near PEFO are five homesteads from this period that display different and unique...
History in the Round: Painted Cylinder Vases as Sources on Classic Maya Society and Politics (2024)
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. The cylinder vessel paintings assembled in the Kerr Archive cover a remarkable range of themes, with many of the best-known depicting fantastical beasts and other supernatural actors. But a not insignificant portion of the corpus features scenes of courtly performance and, as a...
House Society Models in Anthropological and Archaeological Theory: Chaco Canyon and the Prehispanic American Southwest. (2019)
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 recent years, a growing number of archaeologists have explored the potential of expanding Lévi-Strauss’s concept of "house societies" to better understand local as well as regional development sequences. In this paper, I draw on the work of cultural anthropologists as well as archaeologists to...
How to Avoid Getting Stuck: Hierarchy, Heterarchy, and Anarchy in Southern California (2024)
This is an abstract from the "In Defense of Everything! Constructive Engagements with Graeber and Wengrow’s Provocative Contribution" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Precolonial California was home to some of the highest degrees of linguistic and cultural diversity seen in human history. This rich variability provides an excellent example for scholars to compare historical trajectories to understand how different societies developed along different...
How Unusual Is the Trajectory of Precolumbian Social Change in San Ramón, Costa Rica among the Trajectories of Chiefdom Development? A Comparison Exercise (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Centralizing Central America: New Evidence, Fresh Perspectives, and Working on New Paradigms" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent literature on comparative archaeology has pointed out the need for systematic comparisons of trajectories of social change that use primary quantitative data and standardized variables. This type of comparison has the potential to discover and explore the diversity and complexity in the...
Huanca Stone and Ancestor Veneration at Cerro San Isidro, Middle Nepeña Valley, Peru (2024)
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. In the Moro region of the middle Nepeña Valley, on the western slopes of the north-central Peruvian Andes, the fifth century BCE marked a major social crisis, perhaps best seen in endemic armed conflicts, unfinished monumental buildings, and the demise of Chavín-related artistic programs. In this balkanized...
Identifying Late Classic Political, Economic, and Cultural Affiliations at Pacbitun, Belize (2019)
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. For the ancient Maya of Pacbitun, the onset of the Late Classic period (AD 550-800) signifies a time of exponential site growth and heightened prosperity. While this florescence is evident in the archaeological record, recent studies have begun to demonstrate that this affluence...
Identifying Strategies of Integration and Cooperation during the Late Intermediate Period (AD 1000–1480) at Sangayaico, South-Central Andes, Peru (2018)
The Late Intermediate Period (LIP) in the highlands of the Central Peruvian Andes was characterized by a marked intensification in economic specialization. In contrast to the preceding periods, in which mixed agro-pastoral groups appear to have dominated highland Peru, many LIP populations seem to have adopted increasingly specialized pastoral or agricultural strategies. This increased economic specialization would likely have fostered inter-group cooperation, as subsistence generally required...