Social and Political Organization (Other Keyword)
151-175 (261 Records)
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...
Material Bodies, Living Objects: Bodily Adornment and Death in the Algonquian Chesapeake (2021)
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...
Maya Funerary Diversity: A Nonlinear Perspective from Palenque, Chiapas (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Recent Archaeological Investigations in Chiapas, Mexico" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ancient Maya land is characterized by a great diversity of funerary practices. The settlement of Lakamha’ (Palenque) sharply evidences such heterogeneity: pluralism is found in terms of places of inhumation, types of containers, number of people per grave, grave goods, postmortem treatments, positions, and orientations of the body....
Merqueitalaque: Un ejemplo de resistencia e interdependencia local a la llegada Inka (2021)
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...
A Millennium of Sociopolitical Transitions in the PRALC Region: The View from La Cariba (2018)
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...
More than pretty pictures: A decade of aerial imagery and photogrammetry in northern Ecuador (2019)
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...
Multilayer Networks and Relational Plurality: The Scales and Sources of Social Capital across Southern Appalachia, A.D. 1150–1350 (2018)
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,...
Muyumoqo: Preliminary Results from a Late Formative (400 BCE–200 CE) site in the Chitapampa Basin, Cusco, Peru (2023)
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...
Naturalizing Authority: Sociopolitical Inequality and the Construction of Monumental Architecture at Early Xunantunich, Belize (2019)
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...
The Nature of Leadership and Community Cohesion at Postclassic Xaltocan, Mexico (2018)
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...
Neighborhoods and Urban Political Organization at El Purgatorio, Peru ca. AD 700–1400 (2018)
El Purgatorio was the capital city of the Casma State, occupied from AD 700 to 1400. Neighborhoods at El Purgatorio were organized around social status, which was in turn related to a number of factors including occupation, access to and control over economic and ritual resources, and possibly length of tenure at the site. Neighborhoods were distinguished from one another by their architectural and topographical qualities, and exhibit both planned and organic elements. Neighborhoods also...
Neighborhoods on Cerro Amole, Oaxaca: Models for a Mixtec Cabecera (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Checking the Pulse II, Current Research in Oaxaca Part 1" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Intermediate levels of social organization—above the household, but below the entire settlement, city, or polity—are notoriously difficult to pinpoint in archaeological contexts, but they nevertheless represent a crucial frontier for building new archaeological theory to understand daily social life in the past. Ethnographic...
A Network Model of Co-Rulership and Community Ritual in Teotihuacan: From Neighborhoods to Districts (2018)
Experts remain divided about the nature of the sociopolitical system of ancient Teotihuacan, which was one of the earliest and largest urban civilizations of the Americas. Excavations hoping to find compelling evidence of a powerful dynasty of rulers, such as a royal tomb, keep coming away empty-handed. However, the alternative possibility of a corporate or collective government, perhaps headed by a small number of co-rulers, also remains poorly understood. A third option is that the city’s...
New Evidence of the Northern Manteño Frontier, The Land of the Pasaos Before the Spanish Encounter (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Early chronicles indicate that the Manteño groups organized themselves along the coast into complex trading chiefdoms: these regional polities, controlled ports, and navigation equipment such as balsa rafts. In addition, maize agriculture combined with seafood products conformed their subsistence economy. Echoing early chronicles, some scholars indicate...
New Manteños Social Spaces: The Materiality of Ligüiqui (Manabí, Ecuador) (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Recent Innovations in Ecuadorian Archaeology" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The "Perduraciones" project, which has been taking place in the central area of the Ecuadorian coast since 2018, has focused part of their research on the characterization of the social space resulting from the process of articulating European colonization on the present coast of Ecuador during the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. In the...
New Perspectives on the Ica Society: Tracing Changes in Material Culture in the Ica Valley on the Peruvian South Coast from the Middle Horizon to Early Colonial Period (ca. 1000–1600 CE) (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Developments through Time on the South Coast of Peru: In Memory of Patrick Carmichael" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. For nearly 600 years the Ica society flourished in the vast deserts of the Peruvian south coast. Rising to considerable regional influence during the Late Intermediate period (ca. 1000–1476 CE), little is known of its origins or later years. Our recent excavations in the lower Ica Valley have begun to...
New Views on the Ancient City of Cihuatán (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Reconstructing the Political Organization of Pre-Columbian Nicaragua" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Since half a century ago, it has been recognized that the Early Postclassic in the territory of western El Salvador represents a sweeping departure from its Classic period antecedents, as seen in the type site of Cihuatán. Its nature has been variously described as generically Mexican, or central Mexican and Gulf...
Non-standard and Shifting Sociopolitical Organizations at Xcalumkín (Western Puuc Region), AD 650–950 (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Regimes of the Ancient Maya" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. With the publication of the influential “Chronicle of the Maya Kings and Queens” (Martin and Grube 2000) along with the convincing analysis of the Classic Maya political universe in terms of city-states (Grube 2000), a Classic Maya political regime model seemed to have been set up, relying on divine kingship based more on the domination of people than of...
Northern Gallinazo: A Transformational View from the Lambayeque Region, Peru (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Gallinazo sociopolitical organization is rarely considered outside the Virú Valley heartland. My recent work in the Lambayeque region of northern coastal Peru brings to light several anomalies that force reevaluation of long-standing ideas. Today, there are several persistent yet mistaken observations that continue to skew the perception of prehispanic Andean...
The Not Very Patrilocal European Neolithic (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Two decades of strontium isotope and aDNA research on Central European Neolithic cemetery populations have consistently interpreted patrilocality, which is now a foregone conclusion. This paper questions those interpretations from a social anthropological perspective. Models are presented for interpreting strontium isotope ratios and aDNA that consider the...
Nuevos datos sobre los colgantes de lapidaria verde y sus contextos arqueológicos en Costa Rica (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Advances and New Perspectives in the Isthmo-Colombian Area" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. El Museo del Jade y de la Cultura Precolombina del Instituto Nacional de Seguros, exhibe 2040 piezas arqueológicas de piedras verdes (*jades). A pesar de la limitada información contextual, posee un gran potencial para comprender la manufactura y uso de los colgantes de piedras verdes en Costa Rica. A partir de la última...
Oversized Pitstructures in the Central Mesa Verde Region (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Adopting the Pueblo Fettle: The Breadth and Depth of the Basketmaker III Cultural Horizon" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Basketmaker III period (A.D. 500-725) in the northern U.S. Southwest was typified by new technologies, new social and religious practices, and groups of people from distinct cultural backgrounds living in close proximity for the first time. In this sociopolitical milieu, new architectural forms...
Overview of Archaeological Investigations in the Middle Usumacinta Region (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Preclassic Maya Social Transformations along the Usumacinta: Views from Ceibal and Aguada Fénix" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Middle Usumacinta Archaeological Project started investigations in the Department of Tabasco, Mexico, in 2017. Its main objectives are to examine the relationship between the residents of the Maya lowlands and those of the Olmec region and to trace social change during the Preclassic...
Partialities of Power at Uci, Yucatan, Mexico (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Beginning in 2008, the Uci/Cansahcab Regional Integration Project has investigated the causes and consequences of the construction of an 18km long causeway that connected four ancient Maya sites with monumental architecture in the Late Preclassic period. This paper presents the results of recent excavations at Ucí, the largest site along the causeway and the...
Participation, Choice, and Institutional Change across the Eurasian Bronze Age (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. Theories of “complex social organization” have long linked institutional formations to increased concentrations of power, centralization, and inequality. However, for more than a decade, novel models of “non-uniform complexity”—wherein economic, social, ritual, and practical...