Ritual and Symbolism (Other Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Thomas.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The prayerstone hypothesis, grounded in Southern Paiute oral history, holds that selected incised stone artifacts were votive offerings deliberately emplaced where spiritual power (puha) was known to reside, accompanying prayers for personal power and expressing thanks for prayers answered. Proposing significant and long-term linkages between Great Basin...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Diana Stein.

This is an abstract from the "Supernatural Gamekeepers and Animal Masters: A Cross-Cultural Perspective" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. What evidence is there for the existence of Animal Masters and their rituals in the ancient Near East? This paper ranges from Mesolithic/Epi-Palaeolithic to Chalcolithic times (ca. 15,000-4000 B.C.) and spans the transition from hunter-gatherer to agricultural societies. It surveys the iconography and material...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrew McCarthy.

This is an abstract from the "Pushing the Envelope, Chasing Stone Age Sailors and Early Agriculture: Papers in Honor of the Career of Alan H. Simmons" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Enigmatic incised stones dating to the Aceramic and early Ceramic Neolithic periods indicate an element of persistent shared material culture between Cyprus and the Levant in spite of cultural trajectories and material culture assemblages that were beginning to diverge...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Madeleine Strait.

The presence of dogs across burial sites in the southwestern United States and worldwide has been well noted in archaeological literature. The ubiquity of canine burials attests to their historical role as complex social actors in human society, prompting actions and performances, taboos and transgressions. To access the true depth of meaning in many canine remains, then, we must examine them with the level of precision normally reserved for human burials. This paper offers a close reading of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Johann Begel. Julien Hiquet.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Skull offerings among the ancient populations of Mesoamerica are well documented by archaeological, ethnohistorical and iconographic sources. New finds in 2017, in the Lowland Maya Classic site of Naachtun (Guatemala) required intersite comparisons beyond the few well-known cases such as Uaxactun E-Group’s deposits. The association of a cached human skull and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mark Leone.

Proletarian drug foods north of the Caribbean in the Chesapeake area include spirits. Spirits include bourbon. Spirits include those of the dead, as well as the Holy Ghost. This paper attempts to introduce the concept of altered states of consciousness produced by both kinds of spirits. Can these be called proletariat drug foods? The purpose of this paper is to ask whether spirits of either kind so dull the senses that an acute perception of reality escapes the exploited or merely produces the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Julie Zimmermann.

This is an abstract from the "Art Style as a Communicative Tool in Archaeological Research" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. I have argued that Cahokia might best be understood as the capital of a Native American theater state, which drew people to it and spread its influence not through armies but by attracting followers through theatrical rituals (Zimmermann Holt 2009). In current research I argue that storytelling was primary among those rituals....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Karen Schollmeyer.

Bird remains are seldom abundant in archaeological assemblages in the Mimbres region of southwest New Mexico. Despite their relatively low frequency, many of the occurrences of bird remains in this area are derived from interesting or unusual archaeological contexts, and provide a wealth of information on cultural practices and local and regional environmental conditions. This study examines data from over 70 archaeological assemblages from the upper Gila area and elsewhere in the Mimbres...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Hitoshi Yamada.

This is an abstract from the "Supernatural Gamekeepers and Animal Masters: A Cross-Cultural Perspective" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Supernatural gamekeepers of the Ainu appear in yukar divine songs. Mainly as master of deer (yuk kor kamuy) or master of salmon (cep kor kamuy), they have controlled the main suppliers of animal protein. On the one hand, they were believed to keep the animals in a storehouse or a bag, or to multiply them from...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Álvaro Fernández-Llamazares. Victoria Reyes-García.

This is an abstract from the "Supernatural Gamekeepers and Animal Masters: A Cross-Cultural Perspective" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. We examine the traditional beliefs on supernatural gamekeepers by the Tsimane’ hunter-gatherers of Bolivian Amazonia. As other Amazonian Indigenous groups, the Tsimane’ believe in the existence of supernatural spirits (known as a’mo in Tsimane’ language) who own much of the natural world, including wildlife and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Samantha Fladd. Saul Hedquist. E. Charles Adams. Stewart B. Koyiyumptewa.

Ash provides a ritually meaningful medium through which to alter or close spaces. In the U.S. Southwest, the patterned deposition of ash in archaeological contexts has been linked to practices of purification and the preservation or suppression of social memory. Turquoise also carries important symbolic meanings in the region, with notable links to moisture, sky, and personal and familial vitality. In archaeological contexts of the Pueblo Southwest, turquoise is often associated with ash or...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Kerchusky.

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. Fifty-four fragmentary figurines, including 53 human and one animal, were recovered from archaeological domestic contexts at the site of Zorropata, located in the Las Trancas Valley, Nasca, Peru. Zorropata was a large domestic site with likely ceremonial function occupied from the Late Nasca period...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Thomas Ruhl.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Effective water management was key to settle in the Maya Lowlands, where scarce surface water is found. While numerous investigations have showed how complex systems had been organized in Maya sites, implying a great deal of attraction to them, new data, available through LidAR for example, indicates a much more decentralized reality, where household-scale...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David McCormick. Zachary Hruby. Olivia Navarro-Farr. Michelle Rich. Keith Eppich.

This is an abstract from the "Ceremonial Lithics of Mesoamerica: New Understandings of Technology, Distribution, and Symbolism of Eccentrics and Ritual Caches in the Maya World and Beyond" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Obsidian blades and related debitage from four elite tombs recently excavated at El Peru-Waka have the potential to answer the question of why and how the ancient Maya placed this material above, around, and sometimes within the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Angel González López. Lorena Vázquez Vallín.

This is an abstract from the "The Flower World: Religion, Aesthetics, and Ideology in Mesoamerica and the American Southwest" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. One of our primary sources of descriptive information about the Flower World comes from Central Mexican colonial historical documents. While ethnohistorical accounts have portrayed this world with shared beliefs of the floral paradise, this paper provides a complementary scenario, by...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Linda Honeycutt.

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. This illustrated talk uses photographs of Basketmaker III painted bowls and sherds to illustrate four characteristics of BMIII pottery motifs. The data for this talk is derived from 10 years of study on ceramic collections from more than 100 Basketmaker III sites in the Four Corners Region.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jessica Craig. Eleanor Harrison-Buck. Astrid Runggaldier.

This is an abstract from the "Archaeology and the History of Human-Environment Interaction in the Lower Belize River Watershed" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Investigations of an eastern shrine building in a residential group at Chikin Chi’Ha exposed a complex burial of an adult male and three children under the age of two who were placed near his head and feet. While there is abundant evidence for the construction and use of Classic period...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Emma Messinger. Gabriela Saldaña. Jorge Can. Natalie Bankuti-Summers. Jaime Awe.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ritual behavior during the Terminal Classic period (~AD 750-900) in the Belize Valley reflects the ecological and political concerns of the Maya during a time of prolonged drought and balkanization. Following their abandonment, some major regional centers were revisited, often in the context of pilgrimage. These activities left behind expansive deposits,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cynthia Robin. Laura Kosakowsky.

This presentation examines a series of terminal deposits at the ancient Maya farming community of Chan in Belize, Central America. We propose a contextual analysis of terminal deposits to facilitate the development of archaeological interpretations that move beyond the static category of "problematical deposits." The terminal deposits at Chan are located in its community center, primarily in two locations: in the eastern temple and southern range structure of Chan’s central group. The deposits...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jeffrey Davis. Julie Hoggarth. Jaime Awe. Chrissina C. Burke.

Throughout the Maya Lowlands, archaeologists have identified Terminal Classic deposits associated with the final activities in ceremonial and domestic spaces. These features include concentrations of cultural material deposited in the corners of plazas and courtyards. At the site of Baking Pot, Belize, the Belize Valley Archaeological Reconnaissance (BVAR) project has identified several of these terminal deposits. This presentation will shed light on the types of artifacts that were deposited...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Monika Banach. Mark Howell.

This is an abstract from the "The Maya Wall Paintings of Chajul (Guatemala)" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Baile del Tz’unun is one of the dance-plays performed in the western highlands of Guatemala. In the past it was an annual celebration in Chajul. It is also present in Aguacatan, and there is a documented history of musical exchange between these two regions. Oral tradition associated to the Baile del Tz’unun as well as in the same time to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jeffery Kruchten.

The Emerald Acropolis is an early Mississippian shrine complex constructed atop a high upland ridge approximately 25 kilometers east of Cahokia in southwestern Illinois. The termination and abandonment of a suite of special-use buildings located along an isolated spur at the base of the main ridge is strikingly different than the termination of similar non-domestic buildings throughout the region. These buildings, including large public structures, shrines, temples, and a sweat lodge, are...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lars Fogelin.

Mani stones are large stone slabs with Buddhist prayers carved into their surface. In many parts of Tibet, Buddhist pilgrims carry these heavy stones during pilgrimage as an act of devotion. Pilgrims subsequently dry stack Mani stones into large structures including temples, walls and piles outside major religious intuitions. These structures lay, both literally and figuratively, outside of monastic control. In this paper I examine the varied ways Buddhist pilgrims use Mani stones, materialized...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sean Field.

This is an abstract from the "Sacred Southwestern Landscapes: Archaeologies of Religious Ecology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Beginning with Neil Judd’s early speculations about timber importation, the Chaco road network has been the basis of diverse and often contrasting archaeological interpretations about the use of such unique landscape features. While a wide-array of interpretations have been suggested, recent least cost analyses reiterate...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Purcell.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Horseshoe Mesa (WS834) in the Ancestral Puebloan Crack-in-Rock Community of Wupatki National Monument, Arizona, has three petroglyph panels that mark important solar events. Timelapse cameras documented the daily patterns of these interactions from September 2016 to March 2018 at two of the panels. Panel 39 uses carefully placed petroglyph elements to interact...