Social and Political Organization (Other Keyword)
201-225 (261 Records)
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 will explore the relationship between "rich" men and trade and exchange, particularly in polyglottal Costa Rica and Panama in the sixteenth century. It will focus on these caciques's social organizations, their representatives, their political responsibilities, their power exertions, and their rivalries and...
The Rise of Social Complexity in Pacific Nicaragua (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. Despite over 150 years of research, the archaeology of Nicaragua remains in its infancy. Projects have conducted settlement pattern surveys and rescue projects have recovered information from endangered sites, but very little problem-oriented research has ever been conducted. Consequently, “big...
Rising from the East: The Preclassic Foundations of Lowland Maya Societies in Belize (2024)
This is an abstract from the "“The Center and the Edge”: How the Archaeology of Belize Is Foundational for Understanding the Ancient Maya" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Preclassic period (1200/1100 BC–AD 300) represents one of the most significant cultural transitions for lowland Maya societies. Over the course of ~1,500 years, communities settled permanently on the landscape, committed to agriculture, and began building monumental...
Ritual and Productive Activities in the Mound-Top Structure at Buen Suceso (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Finding Community in the Past and Present through the 2022 PARCC Field School at Buen Suceso, Ecuador" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Three seasons of excavation at Buen Suceso have identified a series of occupation floors in the area of the site referred to as Unit 6. This area is also the highest at the site, suggesting the existence of a mound or an augmented rise that was utilized during the Valdivia period. This...
Ritual Space and Ritual Place in California Rock Art (2019)
This is an abstract from the "The Art and Archaeology of the West: Papers in Honor of Lawrence L. Loendorf" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Larry Loendorf has always emphasized that rock art research is nothing if it is not also archaeology. Much of his research has accordingly considered the importance of the (dirt) archaeological context of rock art sites, and what this can tell us about the art. In the spirit of this concern, the archaeological...
Ritual, Politics, and the Structure of Community Networks in Classic Maya Society (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Archaeological Applications of Network Analysis" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ritual and performance play important integrative functions in the creation, maintenance, and negotiation of social ties that bind communities together. The shared experience of these public displays establishes strong bonds between individuals, defining their membership in certain social groups while reinforcing cultural norms and values....
A River Runs Through It: Recent Analyses of the Multi-Sited Líl’wat Village of Lokla in Mount Currie, British Columbia (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper presents the results of the most recent field season of the Líl’wat Villages Project. In its near decade of work our project has continued to employ a multidisciplinary approach to the archaeology heritage within Líl’wat territory. Our investigations aim to deepen the understandings of their oral histories about their villages and other sites....
Ruminations on Puebloan Ethnic Diversity and Ceramic Specialization in the Ancient Western San Juan (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Transcending Modern Boundaries: Recent Investigations of Cultural Landscapes in Southeastern Utah" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Though traditionally perceived as representing two distinct Puebloan subcultures, San Juan Red Ware and Tsegi Orange Ware are best understood as representing a single ceramic tradition whose production geography shifted several times between the eighth and fourteenth centuries,...
A “Salinar Period” Cemetery at the José Olaya Site: Preliminary Demography of a Post-Chavín Maritime Community in the Moche Valley (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Peering into the Night: Transition, Sociopolitical Organization, and Economic Dynamics after the Dusk of Chavín in the North Central Andes" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Systematic bioarchaeological studies of skeletal remains in conjunction with mortuary analyses provide a unique space in which archaeologists can begin to reconstruct past populations, social dynamics, and cosmologies. Following the influence of late...
The Salt Road at MC-6, a Public Work Empowering the Cacique (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Advances in the Archaeology of the Bahama Archipelago" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Middle Caicos, in the Turks & Caicos islands hosted a protohistoric Chiefdom in the Classic Taino tradition as demonstrated by evidence of regional exchange, key resource control, social stratification, monumental public works, and the use of public ceremonial space that reflected advanced astronomical and calendric knowledge among...
Scale, Interaction, and Society: Constituting Social Boundaries in the Northern Peruvian Andes (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Dedication, Collaboration, and Vision, Part I: Papers in Honor of Tom D. Dillehay" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeologists often look to certain practices, such as interregional trade, local feasting, or inter-community warfare, as having defined different kinds of social boundaries—between corporate groups, communities, polities, ethnicities, or regions. Tom Dillehay’s interdisciplinary work on a variety of...
Schismogenesis on the Scandinavian Peninsula during the Late Neolithic Transition (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. A pungent statement in *The Dawn of Everything* is that the enormous diversity in hunter-gatherer societies makes it impossible to talk about one transition to agriculture. There are several consequences to this statement. One is that hunter-gatherers did not wait for an inevitable...
Science Never Stops! Una Década de Arqueología en Chincha con Chip Stanish (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Thinking Big in the Andes: Papers in Honor of Charles Stanish" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. En esta ponencia se describen y se discuten los principales descubrimientos empíricos, metodológicos y teóricos realizados por Charles Stanish durante una década de investigaciones arqueológicas en el valle de Chincha, Costa Sur del Perú.
Searching for the Domestic at Chavín: Integrating 20-Plus years of Archaeology in La Banda (2024)
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. Even after more than a century of research at Chavín de Huántar, two key questions remain about who the ceremonial center was built for and who it was built by. As research attention has largely focused on pilgrims, priests, and peer polities, the labor force and craft specialists...
Seaways to Complexity. Sociopolitical Strategies in Northwestern Scandinavia in the Early Bronze Age (2018)
Along the northwestern coast of Scandinavia the reliance and utilisation of the sea set the stage for a more advanced sociopolitical organization. The technological innovations prompted by the Late Neolithic (i.e. ship technology), turned the sea into a connective arena of interaction and trade. This is seen with the widespread distribution of finely crafted Jutish flint daggers from Late Neolithic I, followed by a steady increase of metal, burial mounds, and settlement sites in Late Neolithic...
Secularism and Religiousness in Late Formative Ceramics from Chavin de Huántar* (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The pottery from the ceremonial center of Chavín de Huántar has been the reason for considerable attention by numerous researchers who have highlighted various qualities related to its manufacturing and iconography. Special attention has been put in ceramics qualified as ceremonial, from closed contexts (Ofrendas Gallery) inside the ceremonial center and from...
Seeds of Complexity: An Archaeobotanical Study of Incipient Social Complexity at Late Chalcolithic Çadır Höyük, Turkey (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Late Chalcolithic (LC: 4250–3000 B.C.E.) is an understudied period of Anatolian prehistory even though the roots of Anatolian social complexity lie in this period. Çadır Höyük, a mounded site on the north central Anatolian plateau has yielded over 460 m2 of excavated LC remains. This period witnessed rapid cultural and environmental change providing an...
Setting the Agenda for the Next Phase in Obsidian Studies in Aotearoa (New Zealand) (2019)
This is an abstract from the "2019 Fryxell Award Symposium: Papers in Honor of M. Steven Shackley" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Studies of obsidian artifacts from sites across Aotearoa (New Zealand) in the 1960s-80s, were critical to identifying a major decrease in mobility, just prior to the onset of endemic warfare, marked by the construction of thousands of fortifications by the ancestors of Māori. Unfortunately, initial enthusiasm was...
Shapes of Power: Rectangular Tombs and Societal Identities at Yaracachi Cemetery, Moquegua, Peru (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Humans have a variety of means of coping with the inevitability of death that is expressed in material culture. To interpret burials as the material remains of ritualistic processes, multiple variables need to be assessed, such as the construction, location, spatial distribution of graves, and associated grave goods. Two types of tombs were uncovered at...
Situating Early Xunantunich, Belize, in the Preclassic Landscape: A Synthetic Perspective from Structure F1 (2021)
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. Over the last five years, intensive investigations of Structure F1 at Early Xunantunich, Belize, have shed light on a dynamic and important time in the site’s early history. The monumental platform structure played an important role in the early ceremonial center, creating the site’s northern boundary, hosting large public rituals,...
Skill Variation in the Manufacture of Lithics at the Shawnee-Minisik Paleoindian Site (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Shawnee-Minisink Archaeological Site (ca. 12,900 cal BP) is one of the most well-excavated Clovis sites in North America. The site is interpreted as a single Paleoindian occupation that measures over 4,000 square meters. This poster focuses on the excavations of a 365 square meter area from which over 18,000 artifacts were mapped using 3D coordinates. As...
Small-Scale Complexities: Tekkalakota and the Archaeology of the Southern Deccan (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper introduces the MAST project, a multi-year excavation program in South India that is designed to explore the role of small-scale societies in the development of larger interregional social formations. In particular this project will focus on areas of Iron Age and Early Historic occupation and production at the site Tekkalakota, and on the diachronic...
Snake Queens and Political Consolidation: How Royal Women Helped Create Kaanul—A View from Waka’ (2021)
This is an abstract from the "New Light on Dzibanché and on the Rise of the Snake Kingdom’s Hegemony in the Maya Lowlands" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Our paper demonstrates the key role played by royal women of the Kaanul realm in fortifying and consolidating that realm’s power and hegemony in the seventh to eighth centuries CE. We draw upon archaeological, visual, and textual evidence from Waka’, including preliminary analysis of recently...
Social Connections Near and Far: The Role of Local and Exotic Goods in the Emergence of Complexity on Cyprus during the Prehistoric Bronze Age (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Local and/or Exotic Interactions: Symbols, Materials, and Societies" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The presence of international goods has long been a signifier of social complexity on Cyprus, but the accumulation of local goods and interregional imports may be equally as important for understanding the formation of hierarchical social networks during the Prehistoric Bronze Age (2400–1700 cal BC). This period marks...
Social Inequality and Polity Organization in Prehispanic Southern Andean Populations (Argentina and Bolivia, 500 BCE–1500 CE) (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 communication we will focus on inequality and the forms of social organization in those Andean societies that developed in northwestern Argentina and southern Bolivia during the Formative (500 BCE–600 CE), Regional Development (1200–1450 CE) and Late (1450–1550 CE) periods. Our...