Power Relations and Inequality (Other Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Julia Brenan.

This is an abstract from the "Capacity Building or Community Making? Training and Transitions in Digital Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The recent archaeological project on Birch Island, Labrador, highlights questions of how digital data are used to gather and convey information to stakeholder communities, in particular, Indigenous groups with limited internet access in some remote locations. This paper questions if representing the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kelsey Hanson.

This is an abstract from the "Political Geologies in the Ancient and Recent Pasts: Ontology, Knowledge, and Affect" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Color is a deeply pervasive element of cosmology in the Pueblo World of the US Southwest. In these rich, affectual ecosystems of chromatic metaphor, cosmological balance is achieved through nuanced relationships between plants, animals, natural phenomena, and cardinal directions. Relationships are...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Pilar Escontrias.

This is an abstract from the "Bringing the Past to Life, Part 2: Papers in Honor of John M. D. Pohl" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Making space for us to love archaeology in its prismatic wholeness is John Pohl’s greatest contribution to the field. We first met when I was an undergraduate taking his course on precolumbian art and archaeology of Mexico. He was my only college professor who encouraged me to connect archaeology with my own family...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Hajnalka Herold.

This is an abstract from the "New Work in Medieval Archaeology, Part 2: Crossing Boundaries, Materialities, and Identities" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The intent behind the notion of “Global Middle Ages” has generally been to broaden the scope, especially geographically, that we examine when discussing the Middle Ages. An important component of this has been widening the field of view beyond western Europe and the Mediterranean. However, a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jason Yaeger. M. Kathryn Brown.

One hallmark of Joseph Ball’s research has been integration of archaeological data and ethnohistorical and historical data, put to the service of addressing larger anthropological questions. In this paper, we present new data to examine one research question studied by Joseph Ball and Jennifer Taschek: Classic Maya political dynamics in the Mopan Valley of western Belize. This valley was home to five large centers, spaced 1 to 5 km apart: Las Ruinas de Arenal, Early Xunantunich, Classic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jerimy Cunningham.

This is an abstract from the "25 Years in the Casas Grandes Region: Celebrating Mexico–U.S. Collaboration in the Gran Chichimeca" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeologists working in the Casas Grandes region generally acknowledge that sites such as Paquimé reflect a social system defined by systemic inequality. Yet, to date little work has been done to document exactly what "inequality" likely meant for people living in the region during the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Katheryn Twiss. James Taylor. Justine Issavi. Scott Haddow. Camilla Mazzucato.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. We use a wide variety of data sets in order to explore inequality at Neolithic Çatalhöyük in central Anatolia. Our goal is to shed light not just on variations in wealth but also on other forms of potential social differentiation in this immense early farming settlement. We assess architectural, mortuary, artifactual, and ecofactual data with an eye to both...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gabriel Prieto.

This is an abstract from the "Peering into the Night: Transition, Sociopolitical Organization, and Economic Dynamics after the Dusk of Chavín in the North Central Andes" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent progress in the refinement of absolute dates recovered at the ceremonial and pilgrimage center of Chavín de Huántar helps to reconsider the regional effects of the Chavín Sphere of Interaction in the north coast of Peru. These new data suggest...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Bernadette Cap. M. Kathryn Brown. Whitney Lytle.

The ancient Maya formalized avenues of movement between and within urban centers through the construction of sacbeob that both defined space and connected places on the landscape. In this paper, we discuss the ways in which a formally constructed sacbe at Xunantunich functioned as an axis connecting economic and ritual activities. The architectural arrangement of Classic Xunantunich emphasizes a north/south directionality. The site’s sacbe, however, was constructed on an east/west alignment....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mallory Melton.

This is an abstract from the "Beyond Maize and Cacao: Reflections on Visual and Textual Representation and Archaeological Evidence of Other Plants in Precolumbian Mesoamerica" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Rulership in Mesoamerican societies was inextricably tied to generative aspects of agriculture. Becoming a focal point for the maintenance of cosmological order provided a pathway for asserting control of aspects of the natural world, like...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kathryn Baustian.

This is an abstract from the "Cooperative Bodies: Bioarchaeology and Non-ranked Societies" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Mimbres culture of the American Southwest is most recognized for its beautiful black-on-white ceramics but recent research is revealing greater understanding of social organization, community interactions, and the response to social and cultural change. Bioarchaeological and mortuary data are contributing important evidence...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Hall.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Historic-era skeletal samples from the United States routinely reflect marginalized and vulnerable populations, many of which were also subject to dissection, a partible practice widely considered a form of desecration in the nineteenth century. Using historic and osteological data from a skeletal assemblage (MNI=25) at Point San Jose in San Francisco, CA (AD...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sara L. Juengst.

This is an abstract from the "Cooperative Bodies: Bioarchaeology and Non-ranked Societies" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Power differences and status are most commonly associated with hierarchy; however, heterarchy, or horizontal power differentiation, is another common way of organizing complex communities. Rather than the vertical ranking commonly associated with hierarchy, heterarchy may include differential or shared access to power at...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Catherine Popovici.

Comalcalco displays a radical departure from traditional Maya building materials in its brick and seashell mortar construction instead of the paradigmatic Maya limestone. Incised animal, architecture, hieroglyph, and human forms adorn the brick slabs of principal buildings of Comalcalco’s ceremonial core. However, their inward-facing, or concealed, orientation rendered these markings invisible. Because monumental architecture benefited from the labor of non-elites, the purposeful placement of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lewis Borck. Jeffery J. Clark.

This is an abstract from the "Why Platform Mounds? Part 2: Regional Comparisons and Tribal Histories" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeologists have offered multiple explanations for the dramatic architectural, subsistence, and political shifts that happened at the end of the Hohokam Classic period. Many of these explanations are good at exploring potential factors leading to these changes in regional contexts, like the Phoenix Basin where it...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Thomas Lobato.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Many archaeologists think that Teotihuacan was a relatively equalitarian society. Prior research on economic inequity has focused on factors such as the size of houses and the remains of murals in residential complexes. The Burials and Society project approaches the question of inequality at Teotihuacan from a new angle, that of burial data. The project has...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Yoko Nishimura.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper explores a possible correlation between central planning and economic segregation in ancient urbanized cities. A pre-planned and constructed urban residential area may have fostered an aggregate of inhabitants who had similar traits, such as ethnicity, class, wealth, occupation and religion. Different clusters of people may be discerned between...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Edward Banning.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The size and spatial organization of facilities for the storage of cereals and pulses provide important clues to the socioeconomic organization and degree of inequality of households and communities. In the context of late prehistory in the southern Levant in the Middle East, we might expect changes in storage to result from the growing importance of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jordan Dalton.

This is an abstract from the "Indigenous Stories of the Inka Empire: Local Experiences of Ancient Imperialism" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Studies of Inka expansion often highlight the important role that elites played in expanding and administering the empire. This is especially true on the central and south coast, where the Inka came into contact with complex polities. Arguably, the most well-known of these groups were the Chincha. Through...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Matthew Rooney.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Hollywood Plantation in southeast Arkansas was a place where over 100 enslaved African Americans labored to improve the land and generate profits for their enslavers for decades following the cession of Indian lands there in 1818. Following Emancipation, the enslaver and his descendants converted the plantation into a profitable business exploiting the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Victor Thompson.

This is an abstract from the "States, Confederacies, and Nations: Reenvisioning Early Large-Scale Collectives." session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Florida once encompassed a vast landscape of Native American polities prior to and after the arrival of European colonizers. More northern groups in the region relied upon fishing, hunting, and gathering, but also practiced maize agriculture to varying degrees. Further to the south, the vast majority of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tia B. Watkins. John Walden.

Ancient palatial complexes offer opportunities to understand the actors at the apex of prehistoric polities. With careful and complex design, these structures were built to represent the affluence of those who resided within their confines. While the external façade of a palace represents the defining barrier between the elite and the public, the architectural layouts of ancient palaces reveal multiple levels of exclusivity. The varying levels of privacy in different palaces may relate to the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Céline Lamb.

As Maya archaeology has shifted away from urban-centric perspectives, recent research demonstrates that hinterland populations, like urbanites, were involved in diverse and shifting practices enabling them to build and negotiate complex relationships. Using a community approach, this paper examines non-agrarian activities practiced during the late Early and Late Classic (ca. 500 – 850 AD) by residents of Chunhuayum, a small yet socioeconomically diverse farming settlement located in northwest...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Taylor Greene.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Carter Robinson (44LE10) is a Mississippian mound site in use from the mid-14th century to the mid-15th century in the Appalachian Mountains of modern-day Southwest Virginia. This paper examines the roles of potential political elites within the community, first examining the artifact assemblage associated with the only excavated multi-phase structure at...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rose Miron. Christine McCleave.

This is an abstract from the "Social Justice in Native North American Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. While collaboration has started to become an expected part of research with Native communities, prioritizing the needs and wants of Native communities has yet to be normalized within academic research. In this session, we will discuss how principles of "data sovereignty" might be applied to archaeological and anthropological research...