Social and Political Organization (Other Keyword)
51-75 (366 Records)
This is an abstract from the "Mind the Gap: Exploring Uncharted Territories in Medieval European Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In recent years, bioarchaeologists have become interested in developing archaeologies of care. Their goal is to articulate evidence of disease/trauma/impairment on skeletons with social processes that shape healthcare and other forms of assistance. Realizing the full potential of this perspective requires...
Care in Crisis, Crisis as Care: A Comparative, Multi-scalar Archaeology of Care in Periods of Sociopolitical Disruption (2025)
This is an abstract from the "The Archaeology of Care and Power" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. If sites, practitioners, and structures of care are embedded in power dynamics, how are those components of care systems transformed when established power dynamics are radically disrupted? Drawing on the substantial comparative archaeological literature that has been published in recent decades on processes and periods often glossed as...
Casas Grandes Culture in the Sierra Madre of Sonora (2019)
This is an abstract from the "25 Years in the Casas Grandes Region: Celebrating Mexico–U.S. Collaboration in the Gran Chichimeca" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This presentation will summarize results from ongoing research on the late prehistoric period of the Sonoran Sierra Madre. Thus far, investigations focused on the Sahuaripa and Fronteras valleys. These valleys are approximately equidistant from Paquimé at 185 and 165 km, respectively. In...
Casas Grandes Vecindarios: Assessing Settlement Patterns in the Carretas Valley, Chihuahua, Mexico (2025)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent archaeological surveys and excavations recorded numerous Medio period (1200-1450 CE) mounds and settlements in the Carretas Valley, Chihuahua, Mexico. This study employed geospatial measures and rank-size analysis to characterize unexcavated mounds and excavated settlements. These results were compared to previously published settlement data from...
Case Studies Reveal Material Complexities of Reconstructing Physical Impairment, Disability, and Health-related Caregiving in the Past (2025)
This is an abstract from the "The Archaeology of Care and Power" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Bioarchaeological approaches to health-related caregiving fundamentally engage with the inequities, differential draws upon community and household resources, and agency and social identities of providers and recipients of care in past populations. Thus, conducting this research in a way that incorporates the cultural, community, spatial, and temporal...
Ceramic and starch grain evidence and the social factors behind pan-Amazonian occupation processes ca. 3,500 BP (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Human agroforestry and landscaping practices in the Amazon Forest are now well-accepted phenomena among Amazonian archaeologists. Along the Amazon River, the oldest evidence of visible landscape modifications is largely associated with contexts in which pottery from the Pocó-Açutuba Tradition is identified, from 3,500 years BP. This tradition, in...
Challenges to Chiefdoms: Māori Leaders in Aotearoa/New Zealand (2025)
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 title of this paper reflects two themes. First, the environmental and demographic reality of Polynesian settlement of temperate islands with substantial rainforests and marginal horticultural potential which prevented the development of large complex chiefdoms such as those of Hawai’i or French Polynesia. Māori...
Changing coastlines and persisting links: human / littoral interactions during the Late Glacial around the Mediterranean basin (2025)
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. Around the Mediterranean basin, marine resources play an important role in both subsistence and the symbolic universe. Here, we focus on the Epigravettian, a Late Glacial culture that spans the northern Mediterranean basin from Provence to the...
Charismatic and Religious Aspects of Maya Rulership: An Interpretation of the Coronitas Temple Complex of La Corona (2018)
The Coronitas Group at La Corona presents a unique architectural setting, consisting of five pyramidal temples aligned in a north-south row and several attached structures. Excavations in this group have been carried out since the beginning of the project, providing important data concerning the function of these temples throughout the site’s occupation. A detailed chronological analysis has shown that this architectural complex was one of the main ceremonial areas of the site, evinced by not...
Chibchan Enlightenment (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. This presentation explores interpretations of past Indigenous political complexity in the Isthmo-Colombian Area. The paper argues that a preoccupation with hierarchy carries unforeseen consequences for the epistemology of the area and proposes a critique; that the various societies of the area...
Children of Casas Grandes: A Molecular Examination of Subadults at Convento and Paquimé (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Bioarchaeological research has played a significant role in understanding the Casas Grandes region of Northwest Mexico. Excavations at the archaeological sites of Convento and Paquimé recovered at least 652 burials dating to AD 700–1450, providing a robust skeletal population for investigations, including research on population demographics, patterns of...
Chronologies of Interaction: Bayesian Modeling of the Chavín Phenomenon (2025)
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. Even after nearly a century of research into the relationships between the monumental centers of the Middle Formative Period in the Central Andes, chronological precision remains as elusive as it is fundamental to...
Classic Maya Wahys: What, Who, Where, and Why? (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 Kerr cataloging project at Dumbarton Oaks is creating opportunities to re-examine iconographic motifs and hieroglyphic texts on Maya pottery. One avenue in which this has been fruitful is the analysis of vessels depicting wahy creatures. In modern communities, ways are powerful...
Collective Action Problems Led to Increased Social Hierarchy in Ancient Samoa: Evidence from Architetural Chronologies and Paleoenvironments (2025)
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. We have identified the evolutionary-ecological processes that explain the rise of increasingly hierarchical society in Samoa over the last 1000 years. Our lidar, ground survey, and rock-wall chronologies in the Falefa Valley demonstrate that the construction of large boundary walls began 900-600 years ago, shortly...
Collective Actions in Neolithic China: Various Forms of Social Complexity (2025)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper examines the role of collective action in the emergence of social complexity in Neolithic China. By analyzing archaeological and ethnographic evidence, the study explores how communal activities such as public works, feasting, and resource management both shaped and were influenced by evolving social structures. The research highlights the...
Comercio y cultura en El Tajín de los primeros años del Epiclásico (2023)
This is an abstract from the "The Movement of People and Ideas in Eastern Mesoamerica during the Ninth and Tenth Centuries CE: A Multidisciplinary Approach Part I" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. La historia de los primeros años del Epiclásico (ca. 750-850 dC) en El Tajín, Veracruz, no es sólo la historia de esta antigua ciudad. Hay toda una serie de factores que participan de ella en distintos momentos de su desarrollo cultural. Varios de ellos se...
A Commons Approach to Violence and Inequity: Public goods, Enchaining, and the Reconstitution of the Shang Kingdom under Wu Ding (2024)
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. In Chinese archaeology the question of how large-scale political collectives came into being is usually understood under the rubric of “state formation.” In addition to the issue of the potential reification of an anachronism in the state concept, early complex polities are generally imagined in terms of...
Community Formation through Movement: Focal Nodes and Community Landscapes of the Mopan River Valley, Belize (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Manifesting Movement Materially: Broadening the Mesoamerican View" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Movement is often implicitly assumed when exploring the ancient makeup of communities. We conceptualize movement at different scales of interaction – at the hyperlocal through households, as well as between and across communities, polities, and landscapes. Here, I will explore how movement to/from focal nodes on a...
Community Structure in Times of Stress and Change: Communal Dining in the Northern Southwest (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The study of community connections becomes ever more important as our current society faces challenges brought on by advancements in technology, unprecedented health crises, and a changing global climate. By studying community events in the past, we can begin to examine the impact of community structure during times of stress and change. This paper presents...
Community Ways and Historical Paths in Brazilian Southern Coast (5000–600 BP) (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. By presenting isotopic (87Sr/86Sr, d15N, and d13C) data from human bones buried in shell-matrix sites (sambaquis) in Southern Brazil, this paper discusses how different ways of community coordination and organization can lead to alternative historical paths.
The Complex Politics of Political Complexity, an Andean Example (2025)
This is an abstract from the "Cooperative and Noncooperative Transitions in the Archaeological Record" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In recent years, archaeologists have noted an oscillation between more pluralistic and more autocratic forms of governance in the same societies. This paper argues that our understanding of these transitions has been hampered by oversimplified models of political complexity. Decision-making today is often...
Complexity, Rituality, and the Origins of Paquimé (Casas Grandes), Chihuahua (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeological investigations in the prehispanic American Southwest/Northwest Mexico region have provided rich insight into the development of sociopolitically complex polities in the Phoenix Basin, Chaco Canyon, Rio Grande valley, and northwestern Chihuahua. In all of these places, sociopolitical complexity is linked to the development of and elite control...
A Computational Approach to Initial Social Complexity: Göbekli Tepe and Neolithic Polities in Urfa Region, Upper Mesopotamia, Tenth Millennium BC (2018)
Extensive archaeological field work and multidisciplinary research in recent decades shows that communities of sedentary hunter-gatherers during the tenth millenium BC built the earliest presently known monumental structures during the PPNA (ca. 9600–8800 BC) at the ceremonial site of Göbekli Tepe and nearby PPNB settlement sites in present-day Urfa province, southeastern Turkey. However, the earliest evidence of agriculture dates to a later period (early PPNB, ca. 8750 BC, terminus post quem)...
Conflict, Spatial Organization and Group Identity during the Late Intermediate Period in the Bolivian Southern Altiplano (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Beyond the Round House: Spatial Logic and Settlement Organization across the Late Andean Highlands" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. During the Late Intermediate Period, the Southern Altiplano region was characterized by the presence of conflict and fortified settlements. These societies have been described as having a corporate leadership, linked to a founding ancestor, which granted them privileged access to...
Constructing a Colony: Investigating Stress from Endogenous Cortisol in Archaeological Hair from a Lupaqa Colony at Estuquiña (2018)
Using enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) to obtain segmented cortisol levels, these cortisol levels can reconstruct periods of heightened month-to-month duress leading up to death. Segmented cortisol levels provide a more nuanced understanding of stress variation through biocultural change and lived experiences in antiquity. This study aims to reconstruct periods of duress through assaying endogenous cortisol in archaeological hair (n=11) from the site of Estuquiña and investigate the...