Ritual and Symbolism (Other Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only William Fitzhugh.

This is an abstract from the "From the Altai to the Arctic: New Results and New Directions in the Archaeology of North and Inner Asia" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Late Bronze Age Mongolian culture known for its memorial deer stones and khirigsuur burials (DSK complex), dating to 1300–700 BCE, persists over several hundred years with little change in ritual art and architecture. Deer stones are memorials to deceased leaders that display...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lauren Koutlias. Annie Riegert.

The veneration of space is a process that at times incorporates deviant practices as a method of signifying key importance. The deposition of burnt infant remains and associated grave goods diverges from burial norms at the Maya site of Colha. In May of 2017, archaeologists with the Programme for Belize Archaeological project returned to the site after a multi-year hiatus. The burnt skeletal remains of an infant, between the ages of 1.5 and 2.5 were found in association with burnt pottery...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michelle Rich. Erin Sears. Ronald Bishop. Dorie Reents-Budet.

This is an abstract from the "Mesoamerican Figurines in Context. New Insights on Tridimensional Representations from Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The ancient Maya resurrection ritual depicted by the 23 ceramic figurines methodically arranged by mourners at the feet of the deceased ruler interred in El Perú-Waka’ Burial 39 continues to be a source of intriguing information about the Classic Maya. More recently, extensive examination...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Leland Bement. Kristen Carlson. Dakota Larrick.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Bison crania without mandibles form a vertical cluster in the earliest of two arroyos at the ~10,400 year old Ravenscroft bison kill site in the Oklahoma panhandle. The skulls were stacked on the arroyo floor, eventually forcing subsequent kills to relocate to an adjacent arroyo. A combined total of five winter kill events have been documented in the two...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Lentz. Atasta Flores Esquivel. Kathryn Reese-Taylor. Armando Anaya Hernández. Nicholas Dunning.

This is an abstract from the "2023 Fryxell Award Symposium: Papers in Honor of Timothy Beach Part I" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A dark-stained feature near the base of a 1 m thick platform in the Helena complex of the Ancient Maya city of Yaxnohcah was found to contain remains of medicinal plants, a plant containing hallucinogens (likely used for divination), and a plant used in the manufacture of weaponry (spears and bows). The feature was...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Stauffer.

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. At the 75th annual meeting of the Society of American Archaeology, Claudine Payne proposed that Lake Jackson’s Mound 3 served as a repository for ritual heirlooms that could no longer be used in the manners their creators intended. This paper revives her hypothesis to examine the role of this archaeological context at the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Trisha Jenz. Sarah Ledogar. Jordan Karsten.

Burials of dog skulls and full dog skeletons have been uncovered at several Eneolithic Tripolye (5100-2900 cal BC) sites suggesting that dogs held a special symbolic role for the Tripolye compared to other domestic fauna. To evaluate human-dog relationships in Tripolye culture and funerary context, we examined dogs from a single mortuary site (Site 17) located in Verteba Cave (3951-2620 cal BC), Ternopil Oblast, Western Ukraine. Symbolic representations of canids have been observed on some...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Anthony. Dorcas Brown.

At the Srubnaya-culture settlement of Krasnosamarskoe in the Russian steppes, dated 1900–1700 BCE, a ritual occurred in which the participants consumed sacrificed dogs, primarily, and a few wolves, violating normal food practices found at other sites, during the winter. At least 64 winter-killed canids, 19% MNI/37% NISP, were roasted, fileted, and apparently were eaten. More than 99% were dogs. Their heads were chopped into small standardized segments with practiced blows of an axe on multiple...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Akira Ichikawa.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper aims to report a new ritual deposit dated to the Late Classic (A.D. 600-900), unearthed at San Andres, El Salvador. The items in the ritual deposit include vessels, Spondylus shells, and two pieces of jade artifacts, one of which was decorated with a double-headed serpent. In this paper, I present new data obtained from our recent excavation and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Leonardo López Luján. Alejandra Aguirre Molina. Israel Eizalde Mendez.

This is an abstract from the "Animal Symbolism in Postclassic Mesoamerica: Papers in Honor of Cecelia Klein" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Over the course of four decades, the Templo Mayor Project (1978–2018) of Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) has excavated more than two hundred offerings in the area corresponding to Tenochtitlan’s sacred precinct. These rich Mexica deposits from the fourteenth, fifteenth, and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Aj Xol Ch'ok Hector Rolando. Mauricio Diaz Garcia.

This is an abstract from the "The Role of Women in Mesoamerican Ritual" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. En el contexto de pueblos invadidos y luego brutalmente colonizados en los territorios que conforman la actual República de Guatemala, las mujeres mayas juegan un papel fundamental en la preservación, transmisión y radicalismo de la cultura. Las mujeres mayas son las constructoras y guardianas del pensamiento, idiomas, valores, filosofías y...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Francisco Valdez.

This is an abstract from the "Illuminated Communities: The Role of the Hearth at the Beginning of Andean Civilization" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. One of the outstanding traits of the Mayo Chinchipe – Marañón culture is the spiral architecture that appears on the mound terraces of at least two major sites of the upper Amazon. In one of them, the vortex of the spiral was a ceremonial hearth that contained a votive cache in its base. The...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kurt F. Anschuetz. Richard I. Ford.

Agriculture among the northern Southwest’s Pueblo communities traditionally and historically was more than merely an economic activity through which the people "made their living." Steeped in ritual and informed by principles of stewardship, spiritual ecology, and ensoulment that explicate their orientation within the Natural World and their obligations to the Supernatural World, indigenous agricultural practice was literally and figuratively a key element in each individual’s everyday...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alex Ruuska.

This is an abstract from the "Technique and Interpretation in the Archaeology of Rock Art" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Polly and Curtis Schaafma have been instrumental in identifying primary archaeological tenets associated with the origin of the Pueblo Kachina Cult. In this paper I revisit key ethnohistorical and archaeological findings of the origins of the Pueblo Kachina Cult and "Snake Dance" (Tsu’tiki or Tsu’tiva). Utilizing a comparative...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kelsey Sullivan. Jaime Awe.

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. Though identified at sites throughout Mesoamerica and the Maya Lowlands, eccentric lithics remain poorly understood and understudied. These esoteric artifacts, however, are very important to understanding the ritual expression of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Aaron Wright. Nathalie Brusgaard.

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. The far-western Southwest presents a landscape of wide, once-perennial rivers cutting through a xeric terrain of lava plains and mountain peaks. For the Yuman-speaking tribes tethered to the waterways, this landscape is both physical and metaphysical, in that it is simultaneously the place where people, animals, and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Arturo Pascual Soto.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. El período Epiclásico en El Tajín, Veracruz, como en buena parte del litoral norte del Golfo de México, se encuentra marcado por una profunda transformación ideológica y por el surgimiento de una clase gobernante que habrá de exaltar los atributos propios de los guerreros. El Complejo Arquitectónico del Edificio de las Columnas, construido en el punto más alto...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Vera Tiesler.

In Mesoamerica, sacrificial ceremonies for the sake of religious merit-making tended to bridge polarities between action and symbols. Some of the ritual practices were mediated by mythical narratives surrounding domestic hearths, divine fire, and the sun itself. Among ancient Mesoamericans with their hierophagic cosmic understanding, the fiery protagonists to which sacrifices were destined to were deemed necessary complements of all life and had to be fed. This talk combines graphic and textual...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Pauline Clauwaerts.

After more than twenty years of investigations, the San José de Moro Archaeological Project has found a total of seven funerary chambers pertaining to the Late Moche "priestesses" (AD 600-850) in one of the most important ceremonial centres and cemeteries located on the North coast of Peru. The sudden appearance of that specific character is echoed in the sacred imagery where the priestess is depicted, as a supernatural women enacting in complex ritual activities with other elite characters....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mallory Matsumoto.

This is an abstract from the "A Celebration and Critical Assessment of "The Maya Scribe and His World" on its Fiftieth Anniversary" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Michael Coe’s “The Maya Scribe and His World” (1973) and the 1971 Grolier Club exhibition for which it was produced marked the first sustained treatment of scribes and artists in scholarship on Classic Maya civilization. It also highlighted the wealth of information that ceramics and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Russell Greaves. Karen Kramer.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. We investigate the pro-sociality of frequent cultural dances among a group of South American hunter-gatherers living in an impoverished environment. Savanna Pumé foragers of the llanos of Venezuela hold 11-hr night dances 36% of all nights sampled during 30 months of ethnoarcheological fieldwork. The Savanna Pumé live in a hyperseasonal environment with...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Raiza Rivera.

This is an abstract from the "The Current State of Archaeological Research across Southeast Asia" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Water is an element which characterizes and links Southeast Asia, however, due to the difficulties of understanding its religious significance within the archaeological record, few studies have examined its symbolic meaning. As part of this ethnoarchaeology study, interviews and observations conducted in ten traditional...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Whitley.

This is an abstract from the "From the Plains to the Plateau: Papers in Honor of James D. Keyser" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Salinan Tribe occupied territory extending from the California’s Salinas Valley across the Santa Lucia/Central Coast Ranges to the Pacific coast. Although poorly known, they created a small but important corpus of rock paintings. Even less well-known is the ethnographic record on these pictographs. This includes a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Martha Cabrera Romero.

This is an abstract from the "After Dark: The Nocturnal Urban Landscape & Lightscape of Ancient Cities" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. What was daily life like after sundown in the ancient city of Wari, Peru? What events took place and who was involved in them? In this paper, activities of the night and the sacred rituals that occurred in the ancient capital of the Wari Empire are explored from evidence that denotes the advanced practice of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brian Redmond.

Much past research on the development of Archaic ideological complexity in eastern North America has focused primarily on ritualism and ceremony related to mortuary behaviors. Less attention has been given to ritualism within what is commonly thought of as domestic contexts and without overt mortuary ceremonialism or monumental architecture. The recent discovery of puddled clay architecture (floors) and associated features at the Burrell Orchard site (33LN15) in northeast Ohio provides new...