Ethnography/Ethnoarchaeology (Other Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only C Riley Auge.

This is an abstract from the "Magic, Spirits, Shamanism, and Trance" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Magic is essentially performative and heavily ritualized in its enactment whether wielded by specialized (e.g., shamans, cunning folk, alchemists) or lay practitioners. Each detail of the ritual performance not only works in tandem with all other aspects, but the details simultaneously connect with and draw upon cosmic forces as the agentic energy...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Laura Wingfield.

The art and structures of the ancient Central American sites of Quelepa in El Salvador and Guayabo de Turrialba in Costa Rica both suggest influence from afar by the late first millennium CE. Quelepa was restructured from what was likely a Lenca foundation to reflect possibly invasive Veracruz tastes, yet some Lenca elements were retained. Did both Lenca and Veracruz immigrants live together peacefully? What can art and architecture tell us of this possible merger, an instance of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Patricia Markert.

In this paper, I discuss an archaeological approach to place-making that incorporates elements of linguistic anthropology, drawing from narrative analysis and Bakhtin’s chronotope to analyze oral histories from a small town in southwest Texas. D’Hanis originated as an Alsatian colony on the Texas frontier, one of four settled by empresario Henry Castro in the 1840s. By the 20th century, the town had not simply transformed but moved – the railroad had caused a rupture in the settlement that...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Caroline Watson.

This is an abstract from the "Taphonomy in Focus: Current Approaches to Site Formation and Social Stratigraphy" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Disaster landscapes dominate Puerto Rico’s Anthropocene, past and present. Yet, since the devastating 2017 hurricane season, climate change and coloniality have materialized unprecedentedly as roofless homes, shifting coastlines, and abandoned lots. As recovery practices become a part of everyday life in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only María Eugenia Maldonado Vite. Kim Richter.

This is an abstract from the "Textile Tools and Technologies as Evidence for the Fiber Arts in Precolumbian Societies" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. During the Postclassic period, the Huasteca region along the northeastern Gulf Coast was an important producer of textiles made of zapupe (the local name for ixtle, that is, agave or yucca plant fibers) and especially cotton as evidenced in early colonial manuscripts, such as the Codex Mendoza and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Hinkelman. Robert Cook.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the US Midwest, most students are exposed only briefly to the precontact history in the fourth grade and then not again unless they opt for archaeology as an elective in college. The Ohio Board of Education requires teachers to merely state that American Indians lived in Ohio, participated in the War of 1812, and then died or left the area....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Spencer Pelton.

Human cold intolerance unambiguously suggests that mid to high latitude prehistoric foragers used thermoregulatory technologies, such as clothing and housing, to cope with the environment, even if archaeologists rarely find them in the record. Others have recognized this, but none have developed a formal means of expressing variation in thermal technologies in the archaeological record over widespread temperature clines. I draw from observations collected during ethnoarchaeological fieldwork...

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 Charles Stapleton. Maria Stapleton.

Abundant water-related art and architecture produced by Teotihuacanos and Mexica-Aztecs in the central Mexican highlands coupled with the rhetoric of today’s farmers from the same region regarding the catastrophic impacts of changes in local seasonal rainfall patterns make it clear that access to rainwater has always been a crucial factor for agricultural success in the semi-arid highlands of central Mexico, especially in communities that lack a reliable water source for irrigation. We collect a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Steve Kosiba.

This is an abstract from the "Humble Houses to Magnificent Monuments: Papers in Honor of Jerry D. Moore" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Over the past three decades, anthropological archaeologists have engaged in a vibrant interdisciplinary conversation about the production of space. Rejecting earlier viewpoints that saw social space as the passive product of cultural worldview or political strategy, archaeologists developed innovative approaches...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nala Williams.

This is an abstract from the "Beyond Leaky Pipelines: Exploring Gender Inequalities in Archaeological Practice" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Following the murder of George Floyd in 2020, archaeological organizations and universities organized panels to address anti-Black racism in archaeology. These talks and panels relied on Black women’s sense of obligation to better not only the field of archaeology but the climate for Black people in the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ashley Atkins Spivey.

Archaeologists rarely examine the reuse and reimagining of artifacts within contemporary Indigenous communities. The Pamunkey Indian Tribe, located in the Tidewater region of Virginia, has a long history of utilizing materials from the Reservation’s archaeological record in a variety of ways. For over a century, tribal members have reused artifacts in methods similar to their intended function, and they have reimagined them to create artwork and encourage artistic inspiration. Archaeology has...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Shauna Latosky. Pascale de Robert.

This is an abstract from the "Body Modification: Examples and Explanations" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This chapter offers a comparative look at the labrets of the Mebêngôkre (Brazil) and Mursi (Ethiopia) with a special emphasis on how lip-plates are made, worn, valued, and evaluated at a normative level. By normative, we mean the historical, technical, symbolic, and discursive ways in which such practices are understood by the Mursi and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Pryor. Waylon Coats.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. While there is a long history of archeological work in Yosemite National Park, this work is grounded in Western European traditions of archeology that does not take into consideration perspectives of the people who produced much of the record this archeology sets out to understand. These people had their own sense of time, space, and values that effected...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Pryor. Galen Lee.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This poster is a collaboration in an attempt to create a new archeology rooted in a Native American tradition of the people who created the archeological deposits, based in a Nim sense of time, space and values. Archeologists must get away from the artificial concept of sites, which divides rather than looks for interconnections. We must show respect for...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Diana Patricia Castro Montes. Blanca Maldonado.

This is an abstract from the "Technological Transitions in Prehispanic and Colonial Metallurgy: Recent and Ongoing Research at the Archaeological Site of Jicalán Viejo, in Central Michoacán, West Mexico" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Tarascan Empire had become the most important prehispanic metallurgical center in Mesoamerica by around 1450 CE, with copper being the most commonly used metal to manufacture a variety of sumptuary objects. These...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brian Medchill. Reylynne Williams. Teresa Rodrigues. Chris Loendorf.

This is an abstract from the "Collaborative Archaeology: How Native American Knowledge Enhances Our Collective Understanding of the Past" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The O’Odham of southern Arizona continue to participate in traditional sporting events, and a variety of organized competitions are still held today. Although they are one people, the O’Odham are currently organized into four Communities, which are collectively known as the Four...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kathryn Arthur.

This is an abstract from the "The Movement of Technical Knowledge: Cross-Craft Perspectives on Mobility and Knowledge in Production Technologies" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. How do we identify the transfer of technological knowledge on the local scale and how it might change through time and in regional contexts? The Gamo of southern Ethiopia offer that their Indigenous way of knowing the world enlightens understanding of transformations in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Johannes Loubser.

Water helps breach the rock surface in both physical and perceptual ways. The addition of water facilitates the production of petroglyphs not only by weakening the bond between particles in sedimentary rocks but also with the moist particles acting as an effective abrasive slurry. The addition of water to natural earth pigment powder allows the colorant to effectively enter pores and interstices. Many virtually invisible petroglyphs and pictographs "magically' appear when covered with a thin...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joshua Bell.

In the wake of several decades of resource extraction (logging and oil/gas exploration), the past as articulated in particular places, material things, names and narratives has taken on new urgency in the Purari Delta. For over a decade communities have struggled to marshal these assemblages of cultural heritage to demonstrate their traditional ownership to acquire resource royalties. An imperfect and highly political process, claimants must overcome the legacies of out-migration, Christianity,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jessica Yaquinto. Kathleen Van Vlack.

The BLM Utah Monticello Field Office (MFO) selected Living Heritage Anthropology (LHA) to document tribes' connections to and ethnographic resources within their field office. The MFO is located in southeastern Utah and includes much of the greater Cedar Mesa area. In order to achieve this goal, LHA is currently conducting an ethnographic literature review of tribal perspectives of and connections to the MFO. As part of this process, with the field office, LHA has been initiating conversations...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mary Morgan-Smith.

The accumulation of debt by Maya speaking laborers has long been understood as integral to Yucatán’s hacienda system in the 19th century. Though the contexts and nature of creditor-debtor relationships are variable and contested, evidence for debt is consistently present in documents related to large, corporate estates. But what does indebtedness look like beyond the hacienda on small-scale estates? In the absence of historical documents, or evidence of a company store, can debt be observed...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Richard Chacon.

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. This paper investigates the belief in Supernatural Gamekeepers/Animal Masters of wildlife in three South American indigenous societies: the Tukano of Colombia, the Embera of Colombia, and the Achuar of Ecuador. Findings show that Supernatural Gamekeepers/Animal Masters are believed to grant success to hunters who...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christopher Sperling.

There are countless ways to interpret archaeological assemblages. One can take a purely functionalist approach. Plates are for eating and cups for drinking; fasteners keep clothing from falling. However, confronted with a range of symbolically charged artifacts from a Late Colonial through Early Republic period site in Northern Virginia, one is tempted to draw upon our anthropological origins to find meaning. A cuff link commemorating the fox hunt as well as coins and pottery bearing classical...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Richard Martynec. Sandra Martynec.

This is an abstract from the "Collaborative Archaeology: How Native American Knowledge Enhances Our Collective Understanding of the Past" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The application of archaeological strategies in conjunction with traditional knowledge has produced unprecedented results from recent projects conducted in southwestern Arizona and northwestern Sonora, Mexico. The Hia C-ed O’odham have occupied this area since at least AD...