Iconography and Art (Other Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kathryn Florence.

The Central Mexican city of Teotihuacan rose to prominence in the last century BC and lasted for six centuries The civic plan was arranged around two main perpendicular avenues lined with temples and public monuments. By the third century AD, the population was housed in apartment compounds. On the walls were murals depicting ornately dressed administrators, armor-clad warriors, and fantastic creatures. These murals were the birthplace of the Feathered Serpent. My research proposes that the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jeff Kowalski.

This is an abstract from the "Tales of the Feathered Serpent: Refining Our Understanding of an Enigmatic Mesoamerican Being" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. At Uxmal, Yucatán, monumental plumed snakes appear in the sculptural program of the Main Ballcourt and Nunnery Quadrangle. These feathered serpents express complex concepts connected to their pan-Mesoamerican role as a demiurge associated with dawning light, life force, and cosmic order...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Darren Longman. John Pohl.

This is an abstract from the "Tales of the Feathered Serpent: Refining Our Understanding of an Enigmatic Mesoamerican Being" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Feathered Serpent iconography among Mixtec, Zapotec, Chontal, and Huave ethnic groups of Oaxaca, Mexico indicates that its sociopolitical and religious roles are concomitant with an investment in mythological landscapes and spiritually active ritual environments. Our approach to hybrid serpents...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Geoffrey McCafferty.

This is an abstract from the "Tales of the Feathered Serpent: Refining Our Understanding of an Enigmatic Mesoamerican Being" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Polychrome pottery from the Greater Nicoya region of Central America prominently features ‘feathery serpents’ that have been associated with the Mixteca-Puebla tradition of greater Mesoamerica. A closer look at the variety of ‘feathery serpents’ has discriminated between more Borgia-like images...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Julia Guernsey. Andrew D. Turner. Michael Love.

Pedestal sculptures featuring supernatural felines with cacao drupes projecting from their foreheads dotted the Late Formative landscape of the Pacific slope and adjacent Guatemalan Highlands. In this paper we consider the implications of the replication of this sculptural form, its role in articulating an elite agenda linked to the production of cacao, and its pertinence to sites of varying scale and relative regional authority. A similar suite of meanings engaged with cacao and supernatural...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Katie McElfresh Buford. Billie Follensbee.

This is an abstract from the "Sculpture of the Ancient Mexican Gulf Coast, Part 1" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Among the most diagnostic sculptures made by the Gulf Coast Olmec is the tabletop altar/throne. This sculpture is best known for its most common features: a wide, heavy cornice; a generally rectangular structure; and often, a niche in the front. Given the tabletop form, scholars originally interpreted these sculptures as altars, but...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Annick J. E. Daneels.

This is an abstract from the "Sculpture of the Ancient Mexican Gulf Coast, Part 2" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The god Xipe Totec has been mostly analyzed from Postclassic evidence (Toltec and Aztec). He is recognized by the representations of a person wearing the skin of a flayed victim or the victim himself. While both types of figures appear in several regions of Mesoamerica, their contexts vary. In this paper I will review Classic and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Oswaldo Chinchilla.

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 the richest repertoires of Mesoamerican flower imagery comes from the Pacific coast of Guatemala. In this paper, I trace the temporal variations in religious beliefs and imagery related to portentous places of beauty known that modern scholars designated as "flower worlds." Lush...

DOCUMENT Citation Only James Cordova.

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. Colonial Mexican portraits of priests, nuns, and children donning elaborate floral trappings indicate their subjects’ holiness and connect Euro-Christian and Mesoamerican ideas of sacredness, nobility, and a propitious afterlife. Their rich visual display explicitly highlights the virtuousness...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stephen Houston.

This is an abstract from the "The Movement of People and Ideas in Eastern Mesoamerica during the Ninth and Tenth Centuries CE: A Multidisciplinary Approach Part I" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. For close to a century, a remarkable set of shells have been found archaeologically across the Maya region and beyond. Most likely shaped and incised in a single workshop, they present a decided paradox, depicting specific warriors and elites yet, on these...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Frank Reilly.

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 suggest that at some point in the development of the Braden art style that the 3D flint-clay statuettes (AD 1100–1175) take the place of the earlier Braden-style paintings (AD 900–1000) found in caves and rockshelters, while temples (BBB Motor Site) that house the flint-clay statuettes substitute for the caves that housed...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jeremy Coltman. Karl Taube.

This is an abstract from the "Tales of the Feathered Serpent: Refining Our Understanding of an Enigmatic Mesoamerican Being" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Most representations of the feathered serpent at Chichen Itza depict a plumed rattlesnake, a being of wind and carrier of rain, with Central Mexican origins dating back to Early Classic Teotihuacan. In Classic Maya art, feathered serpents are not rattlesnakes and lack plumage aside from a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Viola Koenig.

This is an abstract from the "After Cortés: Archaeological Legacies of the European Invasion in Mesoamerica" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Scholars have always believed that maps and cartographiies did exist in preconquest Mesoamerica. The large amount of early colonial Native maps seems to be evidence for such geographic media. But as yet, no pre-Hispanic lienzos and maps have become known. However, the earliest lienzos do show pre-Hispanic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Carl Gellert.

This is an abstract from the "Current Issues in Japanese Archaeology (2019 Archaeological Research in Asia Symposium)" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In 1985, archaeologists excavating Fujinoki Kofun opened for the first time the tomb’s sealed burial chamber. They were surprised to discover that not only had the site been undisturbed by tomb robbers, but that it contained one of the most lavish collections of grave-goods to have been recovered...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alanna Radlo-Dzur.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A distinctive tradition of intricately sculpted metates—commonly known as grinding stones—flourished along the Pacific coast of Nicaragua and Costa Rica circa 300-900 CE. The Greater Nicoya burials that contain carved metates often include grave goods made of precious materials such as jade and gold. As a result, these sites have been subject to looting since...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Chantal Huckert.

This is an abstract from the "The Precolumbian Dotted-Diamond-Grid Pattern: References and Techniques" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Various researches report that the diamond, rhomboid, and square-gridded patterns and their stepped variants designate the surface of the earth as the fecund female progenitor, manifested in flowers, corn cobs, and sweet, nurturing waters. These patterns also designate the zoomorphic aspects of the shell or skin of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kaylee Spencer. Maline Werness-Rude.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Narratives featuring the Maize God are well represented on Classic Maya ceramics. Appearing with numerous other characters and plants in underworld settings, this deity is abundantly documented in scholarly literature. Despite his ubiquity in ancient imagery, the Maize God remains a slippery creature, with an identity that overlaps with other supernaturals. ...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cheryl Claassen.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. An exploratory look at Helmet shell use during the Woodland period and Busycon columella "wind jewels" in the Mississippian period. The investigation is informed by Mesoamerican shell symbolism.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mary Miller.

One of the distinctive features of one of the principal Maya solar deities, the Jaguar God of the Underworld, is the twisted cord—nicknamed "cruller" for the German doughnut over 100 years ago by Eduard Seler—that loops under the eyes (with their characteristic inward curl for pupils) and twists between them, sometimes ending under the deity’s jaguar ears. This feature, perhaps to be associated with fire and burning, takes up its place on the nose of a different deity, Tlaloc, in Central Mexico,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Zachary Critchley.

Spear-thrower devices held a role around the world as a primary weapon and tool before slowly falling out of favor in certain areas for other projectile weapons. While it is widely accepted that spear-throwers were used by the people of the ancient central Andes, comparatively little research has gone into the role that they had as weapons of war, hunting tools, and objects of ceremonial reverence. Many Andean societies have rich traditions of art and iconography, often portraying human and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gabriela Saldaña. Tia Watkins. Emma Messinger. Rosamund Fitzmaurice. Jaime Awe.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Classic Maya graffiti (AD 300–800) provides a unique perspective of individual experiences, with figures etched onto plastered surfaces that were added as secondary elements within existing architecture. In the Maya lowlands, graffiti is typically found within monumental architecture, as these contexts favor preservation in tropical environments. The...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Emanuela Rudnicka.

This is an abstract from the "A Decade of Multidisciplinary Research at Castillo de Huarmey, Peru" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The technological, stylistic, and iconographical aspects of decorated gourds are yet insufficiently addressed by researchers of precolumbian Andean art. This paper investigates Wari pyro-engraved gourd vessels that have been discovered during the excavation process at Castillo de Huarmey since 2013. The archaeological...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Charlotte Ives. Colin Quinn. Lacey Carpenter. Hannah Lau.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The study of ceramics provides archaeologists with a closer look into the domestic life of people from the past. Whether it be daily wares designed for continuous use by close-knit familial groups, or ceremonial pieces used occasionally for specific audiences, ceramics play a critical role in the ritualization of meals. Despite their varying purposes,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dillon Gisch.

This is an abstract from the "What Have You Done For Us Lately?: Discrimination, Harassment, and Chilly Climate in Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Since 1792, nine catalogues of surviving ancient Roman replicas of the Knidian Aphrodite—the first monumental image of an unclothed woman in Western art—have been compiled. During this time, the number of known ancient replicas has increased by two orders of magnitude, yet analyses of this...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alexis Clark. Jeffrey Blomster.

This is an abstract from the "Cholula to Chachoapan: Celebrating the Career of Michael Lind" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. While the Mixtec region of Oaxaca is famous for its polychrome ceramics, including the iconographically rich “codex style” pottery, in this paper we argue that non-polychrome ceramics also played a significant role in conveying particular messages associated with ongoing social and political rearticulations during the...