Ethnography/Ethnoarchaeology (Other Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jared Koller. Stephen Acabado.

The Spanish conquest of the Philippines redesigned the indigenous landscape to adhere to the idealized orthogonal plan outlined by King Philip II’s Ordinances of 1573, centered on the church plaza. This reconfiguration facilitated the successful political, economic, and religious control of the colonial possession. An aspect of this resettlement plan is the concept of Bajo de Campana (under the bell) that implied control through the ringing of the church bell. The plaza complex, which is...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marcella Festa.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Tianshan Beilu cemetery – the largest and earliest Bronze Age funerary context in Eastern Xinjiang, including 705 graves dating to ca. 2000-1300 BCE – has been widely recognized as a key-point in the early interactions system throughout Eurasia – the ‘Prehistoric Silk Road’. However, due to the failure to publish the excavation report, research has been...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Zeanah. Douglas Bird. Rebecca Bliege Bird. Brian Codding. Robert Elston.

Most evidence suggests that Prearchaic hunter-gatherers were highly mobile, and equipped with a hunting oriented lithic technology that lacked milling equipment. Nonetheless, they acquired a broad spectrum of prey and tended to camp near wetlands rich in small game and plant resources. Archaeologists have questioned to what degree this evidence reflects an adaptation that fundamentally differed from ethnographically observed patterns in the Great Basin, as well as whether it was shaped primarily...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Albert Garcia-Piquer. Susana Morano. Jorge Gibbons. Nelson Aguilera. Alfredo Prieto.

This is an abstract from the "Underwater and Coastal Archaeology in Latin America" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The coasts of the Fuego-Andean-Patagonian archipelago, south of Chiloé Island, have a length of over 80,000 km and roughly comprise three distinct areas: the Chonos archipelago, the western channels, and the Fuegian channels. The underwater world of this archipelago as a whole must have been a rich and coveted treasure. The...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Neil E. Kohanski.

This is an abstract from the "Multidisciplinary Approaches to the Subterranean" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper seeks to explore the pivotal role of ethnographic analogy in archaeological research, with a focus on the Maya ritual within subterranean spaces. While ethnographic analogy remains indispensable to the archaeological enterprise, it has faced significant resistance within the archaeological community. This presentation aims to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brea McCauley. David Maxwell. Mark Collard.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Handprints with missing fingers occur at a number of Upper Palaeolithic rock art sites in Europe. It has been argued that they represent hand signals or a counting system, but there are reasons to believe that they were actually produced by individuals whose fingers had been amputated. Here, we report a cross-cultural study that was designed to shed light on...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Daniel Hernández Castillo. Gabriel Prieto.

This is an abstract from the "Archaeophycology: New (Ethno)Archaeological Approaches to Understand the Contribution of Seaweed to the Subsistence and Social Life of Coastal Populations" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The exploitation and consumption of seaweeds is a thriving matter of research, arguably started in the 1980s by the ethnographic work of Shozo Masuda in the Andes. This study goes beyond local discussions or milestones about proxies...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Matthew O'Brien. Todd Surovell. Randy Haas.

Domestic dogs (Canis familaris) are a common presence in nomadic cultures, but archaeology still struggles to identify them in the absence of their faunal remains. What we lack is a means to identify behaviors that manifest themselves in the archaeological record that are in clear association with domestic dogs. One avenue is carnivore modified bone. What experimental studies indicate is that we can isolate patterns of feeding associated with particular carnivores, but what has not been...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Richard Nicolas.

Caves are natural spaces, but like other natural settings, they can be perceived by people through highly variable cultural lenses. Caves are not generally used as utilitarian spaces, but are more often sacred spaces where rituals are performed. The material record of these subterranean features can provide insights for how past peoples connected to the symbolic landscapes of caves, thus affording opportunities to assess behaviors. Research on the ritual uses of caves is fairly new in the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Terry Knight. Jessica Yaquinto. Nichol Shurack.

This is an abstract from the "Transcending Modern Boundaries: Recent Investigations of Cultural Landscapes in Southeastern Utah" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Nuche, or Ute people, have been in their homelands across Colorado and Utah since time immemorial. Southeast Utah formed part of the larger movements of the Ute bands with connections to the area, which in turn formed part of the overall Ute movements across the entire Ute homeland. The...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Chris Loendorf. Barnaby Lewis. Glen Rice.

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. Vapaki is plural in the O’Odham language for Vah’ki, which is the name used to refer to what archaeologists now call Classic period (ca. 1250–1450) platform mound villages. Importantly, Vah’ki is specifically applied only to platform mound sites, and the term is not used to refer...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michal Gilewski.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The prehispanic and indigenous cultures of the Pacific coast of Guatemala are usually known from ethnographic research and ethnohistorical sources that relate to specific local communities and to local archaeology that relates to specific sites. In this paper, I present how environmental diversity leads to interdependence and integration of the whole...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Howard Higgins. Brenda Ireland. Sandra Marian.

This is an abstract from the "Collaborative and Community Archaeology" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Many Indigenous groups that underwent the deleterious effects of colonialism and forced acculturation are now in the process of repatriating their traditional knowledge and culture and reclaiming their unique identities, social structures, and governance. In Canada, this process of self-determination is within the context of the United Nations...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Samantha Stone. Samuel Burns.

This is an abstract from the "Documenting Demographics in Archaeological Publications and Grants" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Academic research is comparable to a conversation. As in all conversations, certain voices are amplified while others are underrepresented. Much of this academic conversation happens in peer-reviewed journals and academic books, but informal conversations outside of these arenas are often overlooked. We are studying the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Magda Mankel.

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. This paper presents an archaeological ethnography of the Migrant Trail and a very recent past associated with the militarization of the U.S.-Mexico border. Composed primarily of U.S. citizens, the Migrant Trail is a seven-day walk that protests U.S. immigration and border enforcement policies and commemorates...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jessica Christie.

This is an abstract from the "Navigating Imperialism: Negotiated Communities and Landscapes of the Inka Provinces" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper analyzes early state formation and integration of local groups at two royal estates, Tipon and Pisaq. Tipon, southeast of Cusco, began as a Killke period settlement before 1400. It functioned as outpost in the buffer zone between the Muyna and Pinagua in the Lucre Basin and the growing Cusco...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Amelia Hebert.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Scythians were a group of people originating in Central Asia that migrated to what is now Ukraine and Southern Russia from the 8th to the 7th centuries BCE. They are well-known for their nomadic way of life, horseback warfare, and apparent lack of a patriarchal society. There is significant evidence that Scythian women were treated as equals to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Edith Gonzalez.

This is an abstract from the "At the Frontier of Big Climate, Disaster Capitalism, and Endangered Cultural Heritage in Barbuda, Lesser Antilles" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. To quote James Baldwin, “History, as nearly no one seems to know, is not merely something to be read. And it does not refer merely, or even principally, to the past. On the contrary, the great force of history comes from the fact that we carry it within us, are unconsciously...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nicholas Laluk. Mae Burnette.

This is an abstract from the "Medicine and Healing in the Americas: Archaeological and Ethnohistorical Perspectives" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ndee perceptions of the past bear directly on the present. Our institutions—lifeways, worldviews and overall continued well-being—are contingent upon our relationship to the land in the form of access, prayer, offerings, power acquisition and overall reciprocity. Intergenerational, ecological and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sharisse McCafferty. Geoffrey McCafferty.

This is an abstract from the "Cordage, Yarn, and Associated Paraphernalia" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In Bribri myth, the Creator God Sibó commanded Sál, the head of the spider clan, to weave cane and thatch to cover the cosmic house, which was built to encapsulate the world order. The house was supported by a central pole with eight surrounding posts representing each of the major clans. In 20+ years of archaeological research in Pacific...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kazuyo Nishihara.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Evidence that basket weavers in the Neolithic Japanese archipelago had weaving techniques and knowledge of their adjacent climate and environment has been found in archaeological artifacts dating from approximately 8,000 to 2,300 years ago (Early to Late Jomon Period) across the Japanese archipelago. Fewer than 1,000 basketry pieces, including fragments,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Bruce Winterhalder. Eugène Morin. Douglas Bird. Rebecca Bliege Bird.

This is an abstract from the "Behavioral Ecology and Archaeology" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the mid-1970s the biologist D. Griffiths proposed that body size determines prey return rates and, citing the diet breadth model, D. S. Wilson stated that the lowest-ranked prey type harvested reveals the general efficiency of the foraging economy. Archaeologists, beginning with Bayham and Anderson, quickly made use of these proposals, initiating a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Fanya Becks.

As archaeologists in Central California shift towards understanding indigenous agencies within the indigenous landscapes of colonial contact (Panich and Schneider 2015) an opportunity has arrived for the field to consider the practical implications of autochthonous Central Californian relationships and ontological perspectives for research praxis. The question posed in this paper, is what are rocks as interlocutors in relationships; how do you think of a rock when it is a part of a place that is...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Travis Cureton. J. Andrew Darling.

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. Scholars of the Hohokam archaeological culture area have worked for decades to build a more comprehensive explanatory framework regarding the interpretation of vapaki, or ancestral O’Odham ceremonial houses. In 2023, an edited volume of the same name was published and represents a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alex Ruuska.

This is an abstract from the "Painting the Past: Interpretive Approaches in Global Rock Art Research" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper explores the critical subject of indigenous oral traditions in California and the Great Basin. Using an interdisciplinary approach that considers Numic oral teachings relative to place-based data in ethnography, ethnohistory, archaeology and geology, the author interrogates traditional narratives encoding...