Ethnohistory/History (Other Keyword)
26-50 (583 Records)
The O’odham and other tribes of southern Arizona and northern Sonora have occupied the Western Papaguería since time immemorial. This dry and desolate corner of the Sonoran Desert is home to rich histories and living traditions that have left their subtle marks on the land, and that archaeologists have continuously tried to identify, describe, and interpret. For too long, ethnographic and ethnohistoric records from this region have run in parallel to the archaeology; however several recent...
Archaeology and the End of Empire in Nigeria: Learning from the History of Late Colonial Archaeology at Ile-Ife (2019)
This is an abstract from the "African Archaeology throughout the Holocene" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. At the city of Ile-Ife (Nigeria) in 1953, three foreign archaeologists (Bernard Fagg, AJH Goodwin, and William Fagg), with the permission of the Oni of Ife, conducted several months of fieldwork in the old city. With the aim of uncovering evidence relating to Ile-Ife’s early industries (including exquisite brass and terracotta artworks), they...
Archaeology and the Historical Construction of Community at Feltville / Glenside Park (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Collaborative and Community-Based Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper examines how concepts of community are constructed retrospectively and also in the present mainly through processes of argumentation and consensus-building and very often in lieu of many substantive facts. The "Deserted Village"'s 250+ year history is well-complemented by its landscape archaeology, but has, at times, been...
Archaeology in the Bering Sea: Results from 25 Years of Periodic Archaeological Research on St. Matthew and Hall Islands, the Most Remote Area within Alaska (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. St. Matthew and Hall Islands are located in the Bering Sea, far from the Alaskan mainland. Located within the Bering Sea Wildlife Refuge, these uninhabited islands are visited by refuge biologists about once every five years for an approximate 8–10-day period, in order to conduct studies of island fowl and fauna. Since 1997, the Refuge has sponsored an...
Archaeology in the Plaza: Public Display of the Past in Banamichi, Sonora (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Just off the main highway, the Ruta del Río Sonora, in Banámichi, Mexico, is the Plaza de la Piedra Histórica (Plaza of the Historic Rock). Raised upon the shoulders of Ópata / Teguïma inspired stone figures is a petroglyph originally found in the floodplain below. The imagery on the rock was interpreted by archaeologist William Doolittle in 1984 as "the first...
Archaeology of Colonialism and Ethnogenesis in Guam and the Mariana Islands (2018)
This paper presents a new archaeological project that we are co-directing in Umatac, Guam. Combining historical written sources and archaeological information, we seek to contribute a better understanding of the historical-archaeological legacy connected to colonial processes related to the Hispanic Monarchy in the western Pacific, and their role in resulting ethnogenesis.
The Archaeology of Gossip: Delineating the Space of Interpersonal Performance (2018)
Much of the literature on performance in cultural and political spheres in archaeology over the last 4 decades has focused on social memory. This paper shifts that discussion from the arena of public commemoration and cultural rites to the de facto performances of the domestic sphere. Private, interpersonal interactions are important in the transmission and creation of social memory as well- they place an individual’s social world in the context of shared social memory, and vice versa. Gossip is...
The Archaeology of Indigo Production in Morazán, El Salvador (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The production of indigo dye dominated the economy of El Salvador for over 250 years, from the late sixteenth century decline of the cacao and balsam industries to the mid-nineteenth-century rise of coffee production. The Proyecto del Inventario de los Sitios Arqueológicos del Departamento de Morazán documented five indigo works (obrajes de añil) in 2015 and...
The Archaeology of Late-19th and Early-20th Century Freedman's Towns in Dallas, Texas (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In Texas, emancipation of slaves was formally announced in Galveston on June 19, 1865. In the decades that followed "Juneteenth," freed men and women established hundreds of communities across the state in search of land, loved ones, opportunity, and freedom. Such rural settlements have been the focus of both historical and archaeological research. Yet some...
The Archaeology of the Southern Belize Region in Context (2018)
The region of Southern Belize is part of the Maya lowlands, an area that is geographically circumscribed, and located in-between several larger regional centers such as Tikal to the west, Caracol to the north, and the sites of Copán and Quiriguá to the southeast. The general history of archaeological investigations for this area are presented, along with site-specific studies from the Southern Belize Region. The current archaeological data of four major ancient polities of this region are...
Archaeology of the Wetherill Trading Post in Chaco Canyon (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Historical Archaeologies of the American Southwest, 1800 to Today" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Wetherill Trading Post and homestead at Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, was at the intersection of a nascent professional archaeology in the American Southwest, the emergent trading post economy in the Four Corners region, the establishment of national monuments through the Antiquities Act, and the creation of a culture...
Archaeology, People and Identity in Cape Verde Islands (2018)
The geographical location of Cape Verde islands made them one of most important places in early Portuguese exploration of African coast. The first European settlers were favoured by the Portuguese monarchy in the relations with African coast. Since 1472, they were forced to carry out exchange with local goods. This encouraged the development of cotton and sugarcane crops with slaves from the "Guinea Rivers", as was common in other Atlantic islands and the American colonies. The excavations...
Architectural Conformity vs. Slave Identity: An Example in Late Antebellum Georgia (2018)
In 2015, Brockington and Associates conducted Phase III Data Recovery at a middle-nineteenth century field slave settlement within the Colonel’s Island Plantation in Glynn County, Georgia. Excavations at five slave dwelling footprints showed that all exhibited nearly identical dimensions and construction techniques. Dwellings appeared to be double-pen wood frame with central chimneys and wooden floors. Rather than set off the ground by wood or brick supports, each dwelling was marked by a...
Are the Tohono O'odham Descendent from the Hohokam and Their Predecessors? A Rock Art Test of Occupation Continuity in Southern Arizona (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 reports data supporting continuity of Hohokam and O'odham occupation and use at the Cocoraque Butte Rock Art Complex by the Archaic, Hohokam, and O'odham people. Data analyzed are from a comprehensive recording of over 11,000 rock art elements completed in March 2018. Surface artifacts indicate the site was in use from 4000 to 5000 years before...
Arqueología histórica del colonialismo en contextos insulares: Chiloé y su jurisdicción (siglos XVI-XVIII) (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Current Perspectives on Historical and Contemporary Archaeology of the Southern Cone" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Los principales núcleos urbanos y fortificaciones en Chiloé coexistieron con un centenar de asentamientos, llamados pueblos de indios, desde la fundación de Santiago de Castro en 1567. Desde ese momento, la dinámica de relaciones interétnicas habría incidido en la conformación del sistema colonial...
Art, Archaeology, and Archives: Pañamarca at Midcentury (2019)
This is an abstract from the "The Legacies of Archaeologists in the Andes: Second Symposium, the Institutionalization and Internationalization of Andean Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the modern history of American archaeology, the relationship between art and science has often been an uneasy one. But in northern Peru in the 1950s, archaeologists, artists, and poets enjoyed a remarkably close camaraderie that has seldom been...
Artificial Lines in Saltwater and Sand: Boundaries, Borders, and Beaches in Oceania and Australia (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Contested Landscapes: The Archaeology of Politics, Borders, and Movement" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Islands have long appeared to Western eyes as naturally bounded entities. It has been proposed that they represent ‘natural laboratories’ for understanding natural and cultural evolution. At the same time, islands are recognised as contact zones, for example historian Greg Dening has outlined the significance of...
Ash Deposition and Community Building in the Mississippian World: A Case Study from the Yazoo Basin (2018)
Ethnographic sources indicate that fire and its alternate forms—smoke and ash—are powerfully symbolic substances for many historic period southeastern Indian groups. The remains of fire are frequently deposited in ways that amplify its power, or alternatively, attempt to neutralize it. This paper examines ash deposition at Parchman Place, a late Mississippi period (AD 1300-1541) site located in the northern Yazoo Basin. Here, and elsewhere in the Southeast, Mississippian people incorporated ash...
Assembling Bodies: Multimediality in Nahua Precious Costumery (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Polychromy, Multimediality, and Visual Complexity in Mesoamerican Art" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The working of precious materials—greenstones, shells, turquoise, gold, and feathers—represented an arena of artistic specialization and tailored, technological expertise among the Late Postclassic Nahuas. Such specialized productions were almost exclusively destined to serve as components of multimedia costumes,...
The Aztec Palace: Heart of an Empire's Rise and Fall (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Aztec empire existed for only ninety years, yet its structure was derived from earlier political constructs and endured after the fall of Tenochtitlan in 1521. It was a dendritic system, each node of power manifested in a palace -- Nahuatl tecpan (lord-place) -- that functioned as a locus of sociopolitical and sacred authority. Lord-places are as old as...
Background and Motivations: The Anthropology of K'uuyemugeh (2019)
This is an abstract from the "From Collaboration to Partnership in Pojoaque, New Mexico" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The K’uuyemugeh Project is designed to develop new methodologies, providing opportunities for Pojoaque community members to oversee, participate and interpret ancestral sites and their continuing relevance in telling ancestral and more recent histories. As a cultural anthropologist the work is also designed to bring the...
Banking on Stone Money: The Influence of Traditional "Currencies" on Blockchain Technology (2018)
Centuries ago in western Micronesia, Yapese islanders began traveling to the Palauan archipelago to carve their famous stone money from limestone, which they then transported back to use in a variety of social transactions. While commonly referred to as ‘money’, these disks were not currency in the strict sense, though their value is not dissimilar to other traditional and modern objects where worth is arbitrary based on both real and perceived attributes (e.g., size, shape, quality, pedigree,...
Barrios de mulatos in the Izalcos Region of Colonial Guatemala (2018)
While much scholarship has focused on indigenous-Spanish relationships in the construction of colonial Mesoamerica, a substantial and growing part of the population of colonial settlements were people of African descent. This trend was equally true in the Izalcos region of colonial Guatemala, what is today western El Salvador. This region was a crucial center in the developing trans-colonial economy because of its early leading role in the production of cacao, the tree whose seed is the main...
Beading a Nation, Beading a People: The Role of Métis Women’s Beadwork in Crafting Culture (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Crafting Culture: Thingselves, Contexts, Meanings" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The embodied act of crafting can bring into being a physical representation of relations and ways of being in the world. In 1945, ethnologist John C. Ewers reported that the Sioux word for the Métis in Canada translates as "the flower beadwork people". With influences from their First Nations and settler ancestors, Métis beadwork has...
Becoming Villagers, Becoming Enslavers: Social Change in Bantu-Speaking Early Villages during the Late Holocene Arid Phase (ca. 1200 BCE. – ca. 100 BCE) (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Archaeological Approaches to Slavery and Unfree Labour in Africa" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent syntheses incorporating linguistic, archaeological, and paleoclimatic evidence have argued that villages inhabited by Bantu-speaking communities spread from Cameroon to the Lower Congo from about 1200 BCE to 100 BCE. This southward migration was facilitated by an abrupt climatic warming event that expanded...