Ideology, Ontology, and Memory (Other Keyword)
1-25 (51 Records)
This is an abstract from the "New Directions in Mongolian Archaeology" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Towns and cities have been an integral part of the Mongolian nomadic society for more than a millennium, and abandoned urban sites from various periods dot the land, inscribing memories of lost empires and long-gone alliances into the cultural landscape. The relation between sedentary urban and mobile pastoralist lifeways has constituted a key...
The Archaeology of Religious Conversion: Virtue and Tradition in the Indor valley, North India (2018)
This paper presents the results of an extended project directed at an archaeological investigation of religious conversion to Islam in South Asia. The project combined extensive regional survey, excavations and architectural documentation focused upon the site and valley of Indor, located in the region of Mewat on the borders of Rajasthan, North India. The medieval residents of Mewat were stereotyped in contemporary imperial chronicles as primitive rebels, living in a forested hilly backwater,...
Ballgame, Ritual and Monument Reutilization at the Ancient Maya Site of Uaxactun (2018)
During the 2017 field season of the Uaxactun Archaeological project new monument was excavated at Buena Vista, a minor center at Uaxactun urban periphery. It is a small carved altar or ballcourt marker, which according to its style dates to the Early Classic. High quality of the carving and the hieroglyphic inscription indicates that the altar/marker itself was a part of the monumental corpus of Uaxactun urban core; uncomplete text provides important new information on the dynastic history of...
The Biology and Mythology of Ancestor Lithification in the Andes (2018)
Throughout human history, many cultures have told stories about people who turned to stone in death. What is the inspiration for these myths? How do they relate to taphonomic processes that affect deceased organisms? This paper addresses these questions in an Andean context by comparing pre-Hispanic narratives of lithification to post-mortem biological processes. In the Andes, tales of lithification focus on ancestors and local heroes, who, in their petrified state, continue to interact with the...
Bodies of Evidence: Indications of Non-Western Ontologies at Paquimé, Chihuahua (2019)
This is an abstract from the "From Individual Bodies to Bodies of Social Theory: Exploring Ontologies of the Americas" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ethnographic descriptions of historic and contemporary peoples with clear connections to prehistoric cultural groups offer ready sources to explore non-Western views of reality. Researchers working in the American Southwest and much of Mesoamerica benefit from robust ethnographic accounts that can be...
Bones at the End of River Street: A Graphic Ethnography of a Bridge in Lansing, Michigan (2018)
There are bones of a bridge in Lansing exposed on the muddy banks of the Grand. In this cityscape, a "Sortatropolis", a once urban space now emaciated and exhausted. There would have been nothing special about this bridge to make its 1987 demolition, its absence, a remarkable tragedy, except that its disappearance can be directly connected to the long exhale of this once thriving capital. The Sortatropolis is haunted by the ghosts of auto industry moguls, lumber barons, and boot-strapping...
Cara Blanca Pool 6: Colonial Logging and the Evolving Landscape (2018)
Cara Blanca, in central Belize, consists of 25 pools that run east to west along the base of a limestone cliff. The Pre-Colombian significance of the pools has been studied by the Valley of Peace Archaeology Project, yet little attention has been paid to their Post-Contact influence on the local and regional landscape. This paper explores the role that Pool 6, a shallow lake centrally located in the line of lakes and cenotes, played in colonial logging operations around Cara Blanca. The 2014...
Chullpas and the Political Relations with the Inside-world in the Inka Empire (2018)
Previous research has interpreted chullpas as open sepulchers, altars, and landmarks which participated in political projects mainly by helping to reproduce corporate identities through ancestor worship and by inscribing power hierarchies and territorial claims on the landscape. This paper builds on the premise that chullpas were not just things with a certain function, but non-human persons (wak'as) capable of acting in different ways, given the affordances of their corporeality as towers or...
Commemorating the Preclassic Monumental Construction at Tayasal, Guatemala (2018)
Research into the Main Group at Tayasal, Guatemala, revealed that the Postclassic inhabitants re-occupied areas and buildings that were constructed during the Preclassic period. Most of those buildings in the Main Group stand on a massive elevated platform, which was also constructed during the Preclassic period. The Preclassic period was the period during which the construction of monumental architecture such as E-groups and Triadic Group occurred at numerous sites including Tayasal. It was...
Complex Closure Practices Involving Ash at a Small Pueblo in Northeastern Arizona (2018)
Excavation of a four-room pueblo in northeastern Arizona revealed complex closure practices that involved ash. A 5-cm thick layer of ash deposited on a defined, but extensive, exterior occupation surface adjacent to the pueblo, then covered with artifacts prior to the pueblo’s wall being pushed on top, suggests the essential role ash played in the life and "death" of the pueblo. By reconstructing the pueblo’s life history, the role of ash is examined and argued to be essential in the...
Cultural Resource Management, Archaeological Collections, and Ethical Issues Associated with Representations of Indigenous Time, Space, Materiality, and Historicity (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Refining Archaeological Data Collection and Management to Achieve Greater Scientific, Traditional, and Educational Values" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A dominant view in cultural resource management is that the archaeological record and its material culture have much to offer in the creation of scientific data, elucidating the past, and contributing to cross-disciplinary scientific studies. This dominant view is...
Cypriot Clay Bodies: Contact, Corporeality, and Figurine Use in the Cypriot Late Bronze Age (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Mediterranean Archaeology: Connections, Interactions, Objects, and Theory" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The clay "Astarte" figurines of Cyprus’ Late Bronze Age are enigmatic and well-known, and their emphasis on female reproductive organs lead most scholars to argue for fertilic functions. Yet how were these figurines actually used? And how do they fit within the much larger repertoire of Late Bronze Age figurines...
Dioses y gobernantes en El Tajin del Epiclásico (ca. 800–1000 d.C.) (2018)
Los gobernantes de El Tajin, aquellos pertenecientes al linaje de 13 Conejo, convirtieron al Conjunto Arquitectónico de el Edificio de las Columnas en la sede del poder político y religioso de la ciudad. Su autoridad se dejó sentir en buena parte de la llanura costera y en las montañas de Puebla y Veracruz. Tláloc se había convertido en númen de la clase política local y el culto al gobernante giraba en torno a esta deidad inmemorial. La ponencia explora el papel que tuvieron las divinidades...
Directional Color Schemes at Chaco Canyon: Quaternary Patterns in Ornaments and Minerals from Kiva Offerings (2019)
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. The placement of colorful ornaments, marine shell, and minerals in discrete ritual deposits is a long-lived practice in the Ancestral Pueblo region. This tradition is exemplified in Chaco Canyon, where numerous ceremonial deposits comprised of such objects have been documented in kivas and other rooms within great houses....
An Empire of Water and Stone: Aztec Kingship and Sacred Landscapes (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. My project will center around the Acuecuexco Aqueduct Relief (also referred to as the Ahuitzotl’s Aqueduct Relief) and its implications as a monument celebrating a public works project by an Aztec emperor. Only one other comparable example is known to date: the Chapultepec carving of Montezuma II. Although the later carving has received significantly more...
A Fettered Serpent? Quetzalcoatl and Classic Veracruz (2018)
Great is the conflation of Ehecatl Quetzalcoatl and Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl: a mythical player in the world creation of Mesoamerican groups vs. a semi-historical personage who presaged the arrival of Hernán Cortés. Veracruz, a region implicated via the activities of both avatars, is particularly enmeshed in this duality. The Postclassic narrative whereby Quetzalcoatl journeyed to the Gulf lowlands appears to be foreshadowed in the desacralization of Teotihuacan’s Feathered Serpent Pyramid at the...
Four Horns Lake: Physical and Spiritual Interactions (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Four Horns Lake, located on the southern end of the Blackfeet Indian Reservation in Montana, was surveyed in July 2018 as part of the expansion and rehabilitation project for the Four Horns Dam. Built in the early 1900s, current focus on this dam has induced action to record resources that may be impacted by development. The sacredness of Four Horns Lake to...
From Omajuk to NiKik: The Variable Transformation of Animals into Social Things among the Historic Period Labrador Inuit (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Social Archaeology in the North and North Atlantic (SANNA 3.0): Investigating the Social Lives of Northern Things" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeological studies have conventionally regarded Inuit relationships to animals in terms of subsistence and food-getting, from seasonality and hunting strategies to calories of meat, fat, and marrow consumed. Inuit oral traditions and ethnographic sources, however, offer...
Human Interment and Making Memory in Viking Age Iceland (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SANNA v2.2: Case Studies in the Social Archaeology of the North and North Atlantic" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Over 300 Viking Age (AD 871–1000) human interments are known from Iceland, many with accompanying dogs and horses. Though these interments are similar to those of elites in Scandinavia, inhumation burial in Iceland apparently served a different purpose — to demarcate boundaries in a landscape devoid of...
Images-in-the-Making: Process and Vivification in Pecos River Style Rock Art (2019)
This is an abstract from the "The Art of Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Lower Pecos Canyonlands of southwest Texas and northern Mexico are home to one of the most sophisticated and compositionally intricate rock art traditions in the world—the Pecos River style. This style is characterized by finely executed, polychromatic figures woven together to form mythic narratives. Artists depicted and vivified the actors in these...
The Invisibility of Experience: Accessing Ancient Sensory Frameworks (2018)
While archaeological analyses that focus on the experiential and sensorial past are becoming more common, scholars continue to discuss and dispute what knowledge of the past is accessible. Without moving beyond the material remains and into the realm of the self-reflexive researcher (Hamilakis 2013: 119), this paper will demonstrate that archaeologists do not need to stray too far from their traditional methods to uncover rich evidence of past sensory lives. By drawing from the field of art...
Making a Homeland and Navajo Cultural Landscapes (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Sacred Southwestern Landscapes: Archaeologies of Religious Ecology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In indigenous America fundamental consideration in addressing "the materiality of religion" is the land itself. In native thinking the land and the people comprise inseparable entities that interact and give definitions to each other. The Navajo, in their migrations into the Southwest, adapted to cultural landscapes...
Making the Walls Talk: Rock Art and Memory in the American Southwest (2019)
This is an abstract from the "The Art and Archaeology of the West: Papers in Honor of Lawrence L. Loendorf" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Over the past few decades, memory has become a topic of prominence in archaeological research. While iconography has long been seen as revealing social practices of the past, rock art has typically been neglected in memory-related literature, a gap in scholarship that is particularly notable in the American...
Materiality of Amerindian Human Bodies in the Mouth of the Amazon River: Life and Death at the Curiaú Mirim I Site, Around the Second Millennium AD (2019)
This is an abstract from the "From Individual Bodies to Bodies of Social Theory: Exploring Ontologies of the Americas" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. These paper aims to show an osteobiographical approach to read human bodies like a special kind of material culture which was inspired by the concepts of Amerindian ideas of construction of bodies and persons in the interpretation of the data analyzed. The Curiaú Mirim site is formed by funerary...
The Meanings and Uses of the Past in the Present: A Case Study of the San Martín Pajapan Monument (2021)
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. This presentation addresses the relation between archaeological patrimony and collective memory using the San Martín Pajapan (SMP) monument as a case study. The SMP monument is an Olmec monument found on the top of the San Martín Pajapan volcano of Los Tuxtlas region. According to ethnographic research done in the 1960s, the local...