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 Jennifer Birch.

This is an abstract from the "States, Confederacies, and Nations: Reenvisioning Early Large-Scale Collectives." session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Confederacies have been under-theorized in the social sciences in comparison to discourses focused on state development as per socio-evolutionary paradigms. Confederacies do not serve to govern so much as to coordinate. This paper explores the practices, institutions, and ideologies utilized by late...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brigitte Kovacevich. Michael Callaghan. Karla Cardona. Rodrigo Guzman.

This is an abstract from the "Holtun: Investigations at a Preclassic Maya Center" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The archaeological site of Holtun, Guatemala has been documented as an intermediate-sized Maya center with occupation spanning the Middle Preclassic through Terminal Classic periods. The site is situated approximately 35 km southwest of Tikal and 12.3 km to the south of Yaxha. The formal site consists of a monumental epicenter built...

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 Aldo Foe.

This is an abstract from the "The Archaeology of Care and Power" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper argues that the adoption of Islam, and specifically the practice of welfare economy generated by Islamic philanthropy (sadaqah), created a new landscape of care in Early Modern Period (15th -19th century) Java. As a nexus for the disbursement of social services, mosques represent the largest public investments made by Islamic polities. Being...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Seth Quintus.

This is an abstract from the "States, Confederacies, and Nations: Reenvisioning Early Large-Scale Collectives." session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Social consent was essential to promote cooperation and group identity. Because of disciplinary attention to top-down processes of power accumulation and political classification, how social notions of social consent in middle-range societies were modified and diversified is poorly understood. The societies...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Shintaro Suzuki.

This is an abstract from the "Repositioning Altar de Sacrificios on the Ancient Maya Landscape" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Isotopic proveniencing has become an everyday practice in bioarchaeological studies. Strontium isotopes have been the most widely used in this field since the 1990s, revealing essential aspects of the ancient societies of Mesoamerica. However, some recent studies have indicated that several areas of Mesoamerica share...

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 Miriam Aráoz.

This is an abstract from the "New Advances in Cusco Archaeology: From the Formative to the Late Horizon" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Los trabajos de investigación arqueológica del Periodo Intermedio Tardío en las pampas de Anta y Chinchero, Cusco, se llevaron a cabo desde hace varias décadas atrás, sobre patrones de asentamiento, jerarquización de sitios, distribución y densidad de materiales arqueológicos, así como excavaciones en algunos...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Juan Pablo Villanueva Hidalgo.

This is an abstract from the "Social Dynamics in the North Highlands of Peru during the Formative Period: Pacopampa project’s Contribution for Understanding the Early Complex Societies in the Andes" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. <html> La Capilla es un edificio construido a 0.5 km al oeste de Pacopampa, el cual presenta una temprana ocupación correspondiente a la Fase Pandanche (Formativo Temprano) asociada a la Tumba del Sacerdote de los...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Johanna Pacyga.

This is an abstract from the "The Archaeology of Care and Power" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Mission of St. Joseph in Ngasobil (Senegal) was often framed by as a place of care—for the sick, for refugees, for children, etc. Care was deeply woven into the vocation of the religious personnel living and working in there, and as such is often easiest to consider as an element of a moral framework, in this case particularly rooted in Catholicism...

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 Lauren Sullivan. Eleanor King. Whitney Goodwin.

This is an abstract from the "Prehispanic Maya Marketplace Investigations in the Three Rivers Region of Belize: First Results" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The understanding of Maya marketplaces has long been hindered by the lack of archaeological data to support their identification. The ceramic data presented here serves as one aspect of an overarching project that uses a configurational approach and a set of cross-cultural marketplace...

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 Paul Roscoe.

This is an abstract from the "Acquiring Status and Power in Transegalitarian and Chiefdom Societies" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The degree to which leaders of egalitarian and trans-egalitarian societies deployed violence to achieve and maintain their position has long been a matter of anthropological and archaeological discussion. I investigate this issue using a database of political information drawn from 148 New Guinea societies ranging...

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 Elizabeth Moore.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. There has been an abundance of research on the Nasca culture and linear enamel hypoplasia (LEH) separately. However, there is no literature specifically on Nasca and LEH analysis comparing the Early Intermediate Period (EIP) and the Middle Horizon period (MH). The research detailed here shows there are evident disparities in LEH between Nasca individuals...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jessica Cook Hale.

This is an abstract from the "<html>Twenty Thousand Leagues (and Years!) under the Sea:<i> </i>Exploring the Place of Seashores in Prehistoric Socio-economic Systems</html>" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Studies of submerged landscapes tend to fall into two categories: landscape-scaled assessments or focused investigations of individual sites. This bipolar orientation isa functio n of the nature of submerged palaeolandscape studies, which face...

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...