Warfare, Violence, and Conflict (Other Keyword)
51-75 (84 Records)
This is an abstract from the "The Archaeologies of Contact, Colony, and Resistance" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. From the first instance of contact with outsiders, native peoples of the American Southwest have been confronted with, and have confronted, challenges to survival and cultural continuity. The earliest organized exploration of the Southwest by Fray Marcos de Niza in 1539 resulted in an initial act of resistance by Zuni pueblo: the...
A Post-Wari World: Late Intermediate Period Defensibility in the Huamanga and Huarpa Provinces of Peru (2018)
Following the collapse of the Wari empire (ca. AD 1000), a widespread demographic and settlement change occurred in the Ayacucho Region of Peru. People were moving away from the rich farmlands and ritual centers of the flatlands to settle on hilltops and ridges. Many scholars point to strategic defense as a cause of settlement shift during this period—the Late Intermediate Period (ca. AD 1000-1450), suggesting warfare was endemic, while others suggest the sites facilitated agro-pastoralism and...
Pre-Columbian Conflict and Early Social Complexity in Java, Southern Costa Rica (2018)
Based on the Spanish chronicles from the Contact period (Sixteenth century), we know that the inhabitants of what is now Southern Costa Rica were in constant violent conflict, at least during the last pre-Columbian years. On the other side, warriors, captives and trophy heads are a recurrent theme in the sculptures and other artistic representations from this archaeological area. Although the importance of warfare and conflict during the pre-Columbian period has been considered in archaeological...
Preclassic Fortified Spaces: Within and Beyond the Ramparts at Muralla de León (2018)
A third season of fieldwork at the fortified site of Muralla de León has expanded the scope of coverage for the project by mapping and excavating nearby hilltop occupations on the shores of Lake Macanché. The work serves to contextualize the space contained by the site’s enceinte, a physical barrier that serves also as a boundary feature. Earlier investigations into the site interior and the ramparts of the enceinte itself begged for a comparative data set, as the significance of a barrier...
Prehispanic Warfare, Leadership and Demography in the Llanos of the Orinoco, Northern South America (2018)
Although for northern South America it has been proposed that warfare was an important mechanism that elites used to promote their authority and the institutionalization of their leadership during precolonial times, the evaluation of the available evidence is still not systematic. This presentation offers a comparative discussion about warfare in the Llanos of the Orinoco. The archaeological evidence suggests that warfare in the Llanos played a differential role in the historical and...
Prehistoric Weapon Perimortem Damage Documentation (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the 2016 – 2017 academic year a Humboldt State University Anthropology Graduate Student recreated a macuahuitl, a wooden club with obsidian blades, and used it on two pig heads for a use-wear analysis of the obsidian. The pig heads were partially de-fleshed and frozen to be added to the university’s zooarchaeology collection. This allowed for the...
Quicksilver and Cruelty: Violence at the Santa Bárbara Mining Encampment in Huancavelica, Peru (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The colonization of the Americas by the Spanish presents a unique context for exploring structural violence. The rapacious extractivism practiced by the colonizers led to the immeasurable destruction of indigenous communities, particularly those working as tributary labor. At the nexus of the colonial mining industry were the mercury mines of Santa Bárbara in...
Reevaluating Early Bronze Age Masculinities: Skeletal and Mortuary Analysis of Transgenderism at Ostojićevo, Serbia (2018)
The Early Bronze Age (EBA) is often characterized as a period of emerging social hierarchies dominated by high status warrior-males. Analysis of human skeletal remains in their mortuary context has the potential to challenge this assumption and inform more nuanced understandings of gender and social status. Individuals (n=285) at the EBA Maros cemetery at Ostojićevo, Serbia (ca. 1900-1500 B.C.E.) exhibit a strong correlation between biological sex and funerary treatment, specifically body...
Refugios y rituales: Conflicto en el Fortín Preclásico de Macabilero, Guatemala (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Entre los grupos mayas; fortalezas, armas, y sistemas de murallas defensivas nos indican lo común que era el conflicto en las relaciones sociopolíticas de estas comunidades. En las Tierras Bajas occidentales, fueron pocos los sitios que alcanzaron un alto grado de desarrollo convirtiéndose en grandes centros urbanos para el Clásico. Dentro de la región, una...
Regional Defensive Strategies and Chronic Warfare in the Southern Nasca Region (2018)
Warfare was a prevalent phenomenon throughout the Andes during the Late Intermediate Period (AD 1000–1450; henceforth LIP). A salient research topic within broader investigations of conflict is how populations cope with chronic warfare. This presentation utilizes geostatistical analyses of architectural and topographical features to reconstruct defensive coping mechanisms among LIP groups living in 12 fortified settlements in the southern Nasca highlands of Peru. Analytical results reveal a...
Reinterpreting the Evidence for Violence in Cave 7, Grand Gulch, Utah (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Wetherill’s Cave 7 in Grand Gulch, Utah, has long been considered a massacre site, notable in particular for the large number of individuals in the assemblage (~90) and for its temporal placement in the Basketmaker II period. Recent debate concerning these remains has centered around the chronology of burials in the cave, as establishing contemporaneity of the...
The Sanchez Site: An Early Agricultural and Early Pithouse Period Cerro de Trincheras on the Upper Gila River, Arizona (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Local Development and Cross-Cultural Interaction in Pre-Hispanic Southwestern New Mexico and Southeastern Arizona" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Sanchez cerro de trincheras is situated on a 650-foot mountain above the Gila River in the eastern end of the Safford Valley, Arizona. The site contains about 130 rock rings clustered on and near the top of the ridge and has perimeter walls with an aggregate length of...
Scars of Warfare: Early Fortifications and Politics in Coastal Ancash (Peru) (2018)
Between 500 BC and AD 500 communities of the coastal valleys of Ancash (Peru) lived in a period of increased conflict and violence. People moved to defensive locations and invested in the construction of defensive infrastructure such as: walls, moats and fortifications. These features are still visible today as scars in the landscape. Two moments have been defined in this period and are related to the Salinar and Gallinazo archaeological cultures, each characterized by different settlement...
Social Substitutability and the Origins of War: An Alternative Theory (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. An important theory for the origins of war defines it as lethal retaliatory action based on a structural principle of social substitutability, a principle that any member of the targeted group can be killed to avenge the actions of any one of its members. Prior to the Holocene, according to the theory, this principle (and hence war) did not exist. Lethal...
The Sugartown Earthwork: A Late Prehistoric Hilltop Site in the Upper Allegheny River Drainage (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Sugartown Earthwork, situated in Cattaraugus County, NY, is one of a series of late prehistoric hilltop earthen enclosures in the upper Allegheny River valley of southwestern New York and northwestern Pennsylvania. It was the subject of a previous SUNY Buffalo Archaeological Field School and is revisited here. Limited testing revealed evidence of...
Surviving Violence: Healthcare in the Danish Viking Age (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Systems of Care in Times of Violence" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Viking Era has been characterized as a time of great violence in both modern and historical accounts, however, little work has been done to analyze the cultural norms and practical considerations surrounding healthcare during the Viking Age. If Viking Age society was as violent as purported, it would have needed to have well-honed systems of care...
A Tale of Two Bombers: Forensic Recovery of WWII-era Aircraft Crash Sites in the Jungles of Papua New Guinea (2019)
This is an abstract from the "A Multidimensional Mission: Crossing Conflicts, Synthesizing Sites, and Adapting Approaches to Find Missing Personnel" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The successful recovery of human remains from aircraft crash sites is significantly impacted by the circumstances of loss, to include how the crash occurred, the size of the aircraft, and taphonomic factors. Two WWII aircraft crashes in the East Sepik and Madang...
Toward a Bioarchaeology of Social Change: Moving Beyond the Myth of Scientific Neutrality (2019)
This is an abstract from the "The Future of Bioarchaeology in Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In his article, Bioarchaeology as Anthropology (2003:27), George Armelagos noted that, "scientists’ perceptions of their discipline clearly influence how they frame their research agenda." This paper will illustrate how all such agendas are politicized. To engage with violence in the past from the safety of your labs and computer screens is...
Underwater Archaeology at DPAA: Efforts to Address U.S. Military Loss Incidents (2019)
This is an abstract from the "A Multidimensional Mission: Crossing Conflicts, Synthesizing Sites, and Adapting Approaches to Find Missing Personnel" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A significant portion of the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA)'s unresolved loss cases involve incidents that occurred over water, at sea, or otherwise within a body of water. In the context of underwater forensic archaeology, addressing these cases require a...
Using Parry Fracture Data to Further Assess Violence in Andahuaylas during the Late Intermediate Period (2018)
Previous studies of crania showing recurrent trauma suggest high rates of violence in the Andahuaylas province of Peru during the Late Intermediate Period. Through an assessment of direct blow fractures to radius and ulna bones (lower arm bones), we further examined violence in the region, anticipating a high rate of parry fractures. The skeletal remains assessed come from Sonhuayo, a fortified habitation sector of Cachi, a Chanka site in the west-central portion of the Andahuaylas province....
Using Trauma Distributions, Victim Profiles, and Differential Scavenging to Infer Characteristics of Prehistoric Warfare: A Case Study from the Peruvian Late Intermediate Period (AD 1000–1450) (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Non-state warfare has the potential to effect myriad aspects of people’s lives. The last several decades of archaeological research have revealed that conflict has shaped much our evolutionary history and regional population trajectories. Despite the importance of prehistoric warfare, it remains a substantial challenge to elucidate the basic characteristics of...
UW MIA Recovery and Identification Project: A Multidisciplinary Approach to DPAA Partner Missions (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Applying the Power of Partnerships to the Search for America's Missing in Action" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Since 2014, the University of Wisconsin Missing In Action Recovery and Identification Project (UW MIA Recovery and Identification Project) has partnered with the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) to help recover, identify, and repatriate the remains of missing armed services personnel. Our approach...
"A Very Good and Substantial Fort" or "More like a Child’s Playhouse": The History and Archaeology of Civilian Fortifications during the U.S. – Dakota War of 1862 in Minnesota (2018)
In August 1862 long-simmering tensions between the Dakota and Euro-American traders, settlers, soldiers, and government officials boiled over into open warfare. For nearly two months militant Dakota warriors, ostensibly under the leadership of renowned chief Little Crow, attacked Euro-American settlements and military installations. In response, settlers across southwest and central Minnesota either fled the region or attempted to fortify their settlements. These so-called "settlers’ forts" of...
Violence among the Gallinazo: New Insights from Pampa la Cruz, Moche Valley (2018)
The Moche of the North Coast of Peru, are well known for their ritualized culture of violence. Warriors, prisoners, weapon bundles, and sacrifice are commonly depicted in a variety of Moche media, and archaeological evidence from urban centers suggests such acts were practiced. What is not known is if the Early Intermediate Period ancestors of the Moche also engaged in such acts of violence. Pre-Moche, Gallinazo phase urban sites were often located in defensible settings and some show evidence...
Violence, Dislocation, and Social Transformation in the Chesapeake, AD 1300–1500 (2018)
Beyond the Mississippian frontier in Southwest Virginia, Algonquian and Siouan societies in the Chesapeake pursued their own culture histories, evidently independent of developments in the American Midcontinent and Southeast. And yet, between AD 1300 and 1500 a set of social changes cascaded from the Blue Ridge Mountains to the Chesapeake Bay which may correspond with developments highlighted in this symposium. How did the late precolonial collapse, social fragmentation, and violence of the...