Iconography and Art (Other Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Yumi Park Huntington. John Warner.

This is an abstract from the "Bridging Time, Space, and Species: Over 20 Years of Archaeological Insights from the Cañoncillo Complex, Jequetepeque Valley, Peru, Part 1" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. How does architectural construction relate to the surrounding landscape and a broader cosmological framework? This paper discusses the relationship among architecture, geography, and cosmology at the site of Jequetepeque-Jatanca in the Jequetepeque...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Annabeth Headrick.

This is an abstract from the "Dancing through Iconographic Corpora: A Symposium in Honor of F. Kent Reilly III" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. While many scholars have suggested that the Aztec sacrificed individuals on the Calendar Stone, this paper will not only explore this aspect but also the object’s affiliation with another form of sacrifice, auto-sacrifice. Using ethnohistoric records, connections between the imagery of the stone and acts of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Barbara Purdy. David S. Leigh.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. During archaeological field schools in 1976-1978, unfamiliar chert objects and tools were recovered from a sandy/clay deposit at the Container Corporation of America site (CCA 8MR154), Marion County, Florida. This deposit, the Alachua Clays, was traditionally considered "culturally sterile." The specimens from the sandy/clay deposit did not resemble in any way...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Juliette Testard.

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. In Mesoamerica, the wearing of wide belts, skirts, and huipils is characteristic of feminine representations. From the Epiclassic period onward, but more frequently in the Early Postclassic period in Central and Western Mexico, the skirts of certain feminine figurines start to wear what has been called, among many...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brigitte Faugere.

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. In Western Mexico, as in Mesoamerica generally, anthropomorphic and zoomorphic figurines are rather often found in groups, either in caches or in funerary context. These particular contexts allow substantial advances in our understanding of their uses and possible meanings, in particular...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Meghan Cartier.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Speech scrolls are common elements of Mesoamerican codices and their frequent use and incorporation into a wide array of human and anthropomorphic entities highlights the need for a formal study of these elements of iconography. The use of speech scrolls is not ubiquitous simply because of their function as a marker of speech in service of a larger motif or...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marcie Venter. Lacy Risner.

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 ballgame complex was an important component of the Classic Veracruz style that spanned the Late or Epiclassic period (AD 600–900) and that was concentrated along the Mesoamerican Gulf lowlands and extended into adjacent regions. The ballgame, however, has early roots, both in Mesoamerica in general and in Veracruz in particular. In...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Laurie Webster.

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. The dotted-diamond-grid pattern first appears on the textiles and pottery of the southwestern United States in the mid-AD 1000s or early AD 1100s. Fifteenth-century kiva murals from the northern Southwest confirm the importance of this design system for decorating ceremonial cloth prior to Spanish contact. In this...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Simon Martin.

The murals of Cacaxtla, Tlaxcala, have long thrown the issue of Central Mexico-Maya interaction into high relief. There we find the richest evidence of interaction between these two cultural zones, though whether this amounts to citation, appropriation, fusion, or immigration is open to debate and contestation. This paper re-examines the stairway murals of the Red Temple for what they tell us about a Maya world seen through a Central Mexican lens. A particular focus falls on the link between...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jacob Lozano.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Varying facets of ancient Maya visual expression have long documented cultural elements of identity, political relationships, and social organization. These components manifest in a spectrum of archaeological material and cultural remains. Within the abundant regions and polities, evidence suggests the existence of local artistic and scribal traditions....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Eleanor Howell. Paul Nick Kardulias.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This study examines stylistic and thematic variation as seen in a sample of P51 type Viking Age (approx. AD 700-1100) oval brooches excavated mostly from burial contexts in central Sweden. As examples of applied art heavily reproduced through casting and imitation, paired oval brooches have the potential to reveal a great deal about how artisans perceived...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stephanie Whittlesey. Jefferson Reid.

This is an abstract from the "Coloring the World: People and Colors in Southwestern Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Subjective color is a well-known phenomenon in the psychology of perception. It results when certain patterns of dark and light are spun at a particular speed, which the viewer perceives as solid colors or rainbow effects. Experiments indicate that this phenomenon occurs when Mimbres Black-on-white vessels of certain...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Megan O'Neil.

This is an abstract from the "Polychromy, Multimediality, and Visual Complexity in Mesoamerican Art" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Examining multiple media, this paper addresses depicted and actual surfaces in ancient Maya art in order to explore artistic engagements with surface, texture, and the sense of touch. It considers, for example, how certain artists rendered bodies, objects, and materials in manners conveying the look and feel of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Bretton Giles. Brian Rowe. Ryan Parish.

This is an abstract from the "Dancing through Iconographic Corpora: A Symposium in Honor of F. Kent Reilly III" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This presentation explores the significance of the Middle Woodland burials found on the lower floor under Mound 2 at the Hopewell Earthworks, including their grave goods, mortuary furniture, spatial patterning, and postmortem treatment. It investigates how certain aspects of these burials’ ceremonial...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ryohei Takatsuchi. Karina López Hernández. Víctor Cortés Meléndez.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Pre-Columbian material and visual culture encapsulate ideologies and symbolism of the Mesoamerican past. Birds play important roles in Mesoamerican societies, both as daily sources of food and in symbolic and ideological contexts found in ceramic and sculptural iterations combined with archaeological and zooarchaeological contexts. This paper will examine...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elizabeth Baquedano.

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. Frogs and toads were important animals in Mesoamerica with several species of Mexican frogs. They were especially associated with the rainy season. Some species of frogs are active above ground only in the reproductive period while some species of toads spend part of the year underground. These batrachians are...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lois Martin.

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. Several precolumbian royal garments with simple, repeating geometric designs have explicit associations to maize, and hint at a deep significance to the cloth pattern–corn plant connection. In the Andes, Inca Coyas (noblewomen) wore special woven belts during the annual corn-planting ceremony. Sophie Desrosiers...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rex Koontz.

This presentation investigates the narrative context of a Tajín region deity whose diagnostic characteristics include a large hank of hair and an extended upper lip. The figure appears in narrative scenes with the major Tajín deities, often playing what seems to be a subsidiary role. The most important association in these scenes is with a liquid-filled temple that plays a key role scenes of ballcourt ritual. The same deity appears in pars pro toto representations of sacrificial scenes with...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Susan Milbrath.

This is an abstract from the "New Perspectives on Ritual Violence and Related Human Body Treatments in Ancient Mesoamerica" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ritual violence is well represented in the Codex Borgia, a masterpiece from early sixteenth-century Central Mexico. Narrative scenes depict Venus gods alongside deities honored during seasonal *veintena festivals known from the Valley of Mexico and Tlaxcala. The Aztec Tlacaxipehualiztli festival...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kim Richter.

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. Although the Huasteca belongs to the Mesoamerican culture area and the Gulf Coast region, some scholars have asserted that its culture, emblematized by its sculptural tradition, was isolated. The examination of Huastec stone sculptures from different periods reveals not only its links to other artistic traditions in Mesoamerica but...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joshua Englehardt. Michael Carrasco.

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. Through the lens of “conceptual convergence,” we examine the multiple symbolic strands that inform specific Gulf Coast sculptural images, focusing especially on the Tenaxpi Egg/Homshuk sculpture. This sculpture, excavated on Tenaxpi Island in Lake Catemaco, shows a figure sculpted on an egg-shaped stone. This image likely references...

DOCUMENT Citation Only James Doyle.

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. In “The Maya Scribe and His World”, Michael D. Coe recognized a “Maya artist of enormous distinction” when analyzing the hand of the painter of the codex-style drinking cup now known as the Metropolitan Vase. This presentation is a reexamination of individual hands in the codex style...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Claudia Garcia-Des Lauriers.

Artistic evidence of interactions is among the most salient and most debated in terms of the relationships that it represents between different polities and regions. Traditionally, the focus of analysis is on stylistic and iconographic influences and a discussion of retention of original meanings or evidences of disjunctions. Based on my research on the topic of Classic Period interactions from the Pacific Coast of Chiapas, I have come to the conclusion that our perspectives are much too...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joshua Englehardt. Michael Carrasco.

This paper explores theoretical and methodological issues associated with the etic conceptualization of Mesoamerican deity systems and the identification of individual supernaturals in cross–cultural contexts. It critically focuses on previous classificatory systems of Olmec deities. Iconographers often identify individual deities on the basis of defining attributes or material accoutrements, frequently extending these identifications across contexts (as in Covarrubias’ famous "evolution of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Shauna Garland.

This is an abstract from the "Manifesting Movement Materially: Broadening the Mesoamerican View" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The 16th century was a time of extraordinary cultural exchange in Central Mexico. The heterogeneous indigenous populations interacted with recently arrived Spanish and the Creole populations. In this paper, I examine one manifestation of these peoples’ concepts of place, space, and movement as visually represented in...