Intermediate Area (Other Keyword)
1-25 (182 Records)
Ancient eastern Honduran populations utilized foreign symbols in limited elite contexts, such as site planning and architecture, but most elements of material culture reflect clear connections to Lower Central America. Iconography seen in petroglyphs appears significantly different from that seen in other media, and may yield additional information and insights into identity formation and interactions within the region. For many reasons, these petroglyphs have not been extensively studied. While...
"Across the Agua to Managua" and Beyond: Getting Past Migration in Nicaraguan Prehistory (2018)
Despite being the largest country in Central America, Nicaragua’s archaeological record remains the least explored and most ignored. One consequence of this is that reconstructions of Nicaragua’s prehistory have tended to rely overmuch on rather sparse (and not necessarily reliable) ethnohistoric accounts in which migration from Mesoamerican homelands is heavily emphasized, generally to the detriment of other kinds of cultural phenomena, including indigenous developments that are not explicitly...
Analysis of Shell Trade Patterns at Salado Sites in the Southwest (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Mogollon, Mimbres, and Salado Archaeology in Southwest New Mexico and Beyond" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The purpose of this poster is to examine the shell assemblages found at the Dinwiddie, Gila River Farm, and 3-Up sites that were excavated by previous Archaeology Southwest field schools. The poster will focus on shell trade and exchange to determine if there are differences in shell trade between the three...
Anticipating Ruptures: Living with Uncertainty and Undertaking Repair (2024)
This is an abstract from the "The Archaeology of Failure" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Drawing on archaeological research on the longue durée of ancestral Lenca society in Honduras, we argue that centuries of resilience provided the tools people needed to understand and respond to periodic interruptions in the normal progress of seasons, lives, and relationships, “failures” of specific forms of social relations most dramatically visible as...
The Apparent Resilience of the Dry Tropical Forests of the Nicaraguan Region of the Central American Dry Corridor to Extreme Variations in Climate over the Last c.1200 Years (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Reconstructing the Political Organization of Pre-Columbian Nicaragua" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Central American dry corridor is currently and has historically been the most densely populated area of the Central American Isthmus and is subject to the greatest covariance in precipitation between seasons. The vegetation of this region was typically composed of dry tropical forests, which are suggested to be...
Aproximación al estudio de forma-función de la cerámica de contextos rituales en dos sitios con arquitectura monumental en el Valle Central de Costa Rica: 750-1150 dC (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Centralizing Central America: New Evidence, Fresh Perspectives, and Working on New Paradigms" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Trabajos pormenorizados a nivel de forma-función para la caracterización de actividades y espacios sociales son raros en las investigaciones arqueológicas intra-sitio en el Valle Central de Costa Rica, incluyendo asentamientos complejos y con construcciones monumentales características del 750...
Archaeological Sites and Flooding in the Diquís Delta, Southeastern Costa Rica (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Unraveling the Mysteries of the Isthmo-Colombian Area’s Past: A Symposium in Honor of Archaeologist Richard Cooke and His Contributions" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The interaction between ancient societies and their natural environment was one of the topics discussed by Richard G. Cooke for southern Central America. We focus on the Diquis Delta, Costa Rica, an alluvial plain formed by the Térraba and Sierpe...
Archaeology of Mining in Central Asia: Current Projects, Approaches, and Limitations (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Advances and New Perspectives in Central Asian Archaeology" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The archaeology of mining in ancient Central Asia has long interested Russian-speaking archaeologists and geologists. Already in 1917, for example, Veber recognized Central Asia as a fertile ground for archaeological inquiry concerning pre-modern mines. Yet, perhaps due to remoteness and political setting, the research produced...
The Archaeology of Travel in Greater Nicoya (2018)
Sometime before AD 1, a dynamic interaction and exchange network developed among the villages and hamlets of Greater Nicoya. The range and frequency of trade within this region is demonstrated by geochemically sourced ceramic and stone artifacts. The travel routes along which these artifacts were traded remain poorly understood. Geographic information systems (GIS) offer a means to predictively model the optimal terrestrial and aquatic travel routes that interconnected the settlements of Greater...
Archaeometric Studies of Rock Paintings in Colombia, South America: Geochemical and Mineralogical Characterization (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Geochemical studies of rock paintings in Colombia help to reflect on the technological processes used by the painting peoples to make these representations. With the use of analytical techniques, the chemical and molecular composition of pigments and of possible raw materials used in their manufacture are identified. Geochemical and mineralogical analyses...
Architecture of Pre-Columbian Northeast Honduras (2018)
In 2017, the postclassic settlement of Guadalupe on the north-east coast of Honduras revealed remnants of wattle and daub (bajareque) constructions. This was an important finding as information on precolonial architecture in north-east Honduras has been scant, due not only to the low number of archeological investigations in the area, but to the use of highly perishable materials in these constructions. Despite this, recent ethnographic reports have provided indispensable information about...
Arquitectura Habitacional: Sistema Constructivo y Organización Espacial en el Sitio Finca 6, Delta del Diquís, Costa Rica (2018)
El Delta del Diquís en el sureste de Costa Rica se ha postulado como un centro diferenciado en la producción de bienes (cerámica, oro, esculturas de piedra) durante el Periodo Chiriquí (800 – 1550 d.C.) como parte de una sociedad jerárquica. La arquitectura y la configuración interna que presentan los sitios reflejan manifestaciones particulares donde destaca la construcción de montículos de tierra compactada con mampostería de cantos rodados y ornamentación de rocas calizas. Las estructuras...
Art, Archaeology, and Chronology Building: Recent Investigations at Fracción Mujular (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Located on the Pacific Coast of Chiapas, Mexico, the site of Fracción Mujular is best known for its corpus of carved stone monuments. First investigated by Carlos Navarrete in the 1960’s, the site is characterized by multiple stelae and carved altars. Several of Fracción Mujular’s stelae contain circular glyphs which seem to associate the site with the nearby...
Artisan Communities, Regional Interaction, and Identity in Eastern Honduras (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Centralizing Central America: New Evidence, Fresh Perspectives, and Working on New Paradigms" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper discusses the role that two distinctive artisan communities from Eastern Honduras, El Chichicaste and Dos Quebradas, played as producers of pottery and obsidian blades within local and interregional exchange networks. Analysis of pottery, obsidian, and settlement patterns from both...
Artisanal Lineages, Communities of Practice and Learning Traditions in Muisca otive goldwork (Colombia): An Initial Exploration (2019)
This is an abstract from the "The Movement of Technical Knowledge: Cross-Craft Perspectives on Mobility and Knowledge in Production Technologies" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Technological and stylistic regularities in material culture are often used to define archaeological ‘cultures’, and variously interpreted as resulting from communities of practice, learning traditions and/and imitation, together with consumer or patron demands....
Assessing Agricultural Intensification in Greater Chiriquí during the Aguas Buenas Period (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Advances and New Perspectives in the Isthmo-Colombian Area" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Aguas Buenas (roughly 300 BC–AD 900) was a period characterized by the growth of small villages and the development of identifiable settlement hierarchies in certain areas. This paper applies a variant of the site catchment analysis originally articulated by Steponaitis (1981) to evaluate the relationship between...
Athapaskans on the Plains: A Glimpse of Dismal River Lithic Technology (2019)
This is an abstract from the "New and Ongoing Research on the North American Plains and Rocky Mountains" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent interest in early Athapaskan population movements has led to the reconsideration of Dismal River sites on the Central Plains during the mid-16th to 18th centuries. Although most archaeologists recognize Dismal River people as ancestral Apache, an unclear archaeological record and outdated evidence has led...
Avian Imagery on Preclumbian Ceramics from Pacific Nicaragua (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Centralizing Central America: New Evidence, Fresh Perspectives, and Working on New Paradigms" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Throughout human history people have been entranced by avians. Their ability to fly from earth to the sky, while displaying grace and beauty, as well as exhibiting a ferocity to protect their nests and hatchlings was revered. Birds were often seen as messengers between the sky and earth,...
Between Fishing and Rites of Passage at Death: Recent Developments from Excavations at Jicarita Island, Coiba, Panama (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Unraveling the Mysteries of the Isthmo-Colombian Area’s Past: A Symposium in Honor of Archaeologist Richard Cooke and His Contributions" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A recent focus on insular areas has expanded our knowledge on the abundance and diversity of insular, coastal, and pelagic habitats harvested from ca. 6200 BP. Inspired by Richard Cooke’s vision to explore the Coiba Archipelago, in 2023 the authors...
The Bioarchaeology of Greater Chiriquí: Challenges, Finds, and Future Directions (2018)
Greater Chiriquí, the pre-Columbian cultural sphere encompassing western Panama and southern Costa Rica, has been subjected to intense looting activities since the mid-19th century. Nevertheless, archaeological exploration of the area to date has successfully contextualized the nature and transitions of non-perishable material culture. However, organic remains rarely survive in funerary contexts due to the high acidity of the soil, high humidity, and high precipitation in this region. Human...
Botanical Resources in Ancient Costa Rican Cloud Forests (2023)
This is an abstract from the "The Archaeology of Tropical Montane Cloud Forests" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Paleoethnobotanical investigations at domestic contexts in Arenal, Costa Rica, reveal the plant resources utilized by past peoples living in a tropical montane cloud forest setting. Macrobotanical remains recovered through horizontal excavations of household structures at G-995 La Chiripa and G-164 Sitio Bolivar and flotation of soil...
The Carchi-Nariño’s mollusks shells aerophones of the Royal Museums of Art and History of Brussels. Analysis by CT scan. (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The archaeological collection of the Royal Museums of Art and History in Brussels gathers more than 377 pre-Columbian objects from Ecuador. Among these are twenty wind musical instruments (flutes and ocarinas) in ceramic from the Carchi-Nariño culture. These objects, which joined the collections in the 1990s, had remained dormant in the museum’s storage...
Ceramics Inside and Out: Food, Style, and Identity in Coastal Northeastern Honduras during the Selin Period (AD 300–1000) (2018)
Prehispanic populations of northeastern Honduras were positioned at the border of Mesoamerica and Lower Central America. Previous research on ceramic style suggests local affiliation shifted over time from north to south as part of an adept strategy to navigate the complex political and social landscape of the region through the promotion of an inclusive group identity. This study explores the actual implementation of that strategy by investigating communal feasting contexts where symbolically...
Changing and Exchanging Social Values of Metals: The Integration of Tumbaga and Iron Objects in Indigenous Graves in the Colombia’s Caribbean Region (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Materials in Movement in the Isthmo-Colombian Area" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Although the colonial order between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries transformed the use and trading of metal objects employed in indigenous funerary practices in Colombia’s Caribbean region, it also enabled local goldwork traditions to continue. Particularly, in the lower-Magdalena River region, the “Malibú” buried their dead...
Characterization of Mendoza and Cortezo Pigments: Communities of Practice and Ceramic Production in Precolumbian Panama (AD 1300–1500) (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Materials in Movement in the Isthmo-Colombian Area" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. We present the results of an exploratory pigment characterization of the Mendoza and Cortezo Red-Buff ceramics. These ceramic styles produced from CE 1300 until the first part of the Spanish colonization tend to appear in association (Mendoza-Cortezo complex). Mendoza, distinguished for the ceramic plates decorated with polychrome...