Frontiers and Borderlands (Other Keyword)
1-25 (109 Records)
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. In the late-nineteenth century, Maya refugees fleeing the violence of the Caste War of Yucatan (1847-1901) briefly reoccupied the ancient Maya ruins of Tikal. Unlike the numerous Yucatec refugee communities established to the east in British Honduras, those who settled at Tikal combined with Lacandon Maya, and...
Absent and Present: Contested Landscapes and Undocumented Migration at the U.S.-Mexico Border (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Chicanx Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In pursuing archaeological research on contemporary undocumented migration at the Arizona-Sonora border, it became necessary for me to address the myriad and potent absences that made the entwined processes of undocumented migration, humanitarian efforts on behalf of migrants, and border security aimed against migrants tangible to me through scales of space and time....
American Periphery, Sonoran Heartland: Recent Archaeological Explorations of Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Transcending Boundaries and Exploring Pasts: Current Archaeological Investigations of the Arizona-Sonora Borderlands" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument (ORPI) is a vast, rugged, and remote unit of the U.S. National Park System situated in the heart of Arizona’s Sonoran Desert. Measuring 1,338.25 km² (517.7 mi²), the park encompasses an area half the size of the state of Rhode Island....
An Analysis of Botanical Remains from the Site of Quilcapampa (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Wari and the Far Peruvian South Coast: Final Results of Excavations in Quilcapampa" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper presents the results of the recovery and identification of plant remains from the site of Quilcapampa La Antigua. Located in the Department of Arequipa, Peru, Quilcapampa provides evidence of cultural material associated with the Wari Empire (AD 600-1000). This presentation focuses on the plant...
Ancient Roads in the Territory of San Giuliano (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Etruscan Centralization to Medieval Marginalization: Shifts in Settlement and Mortuary Traditions at San Giuliano, Italy" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper discusses the evidence for Etruscan and Roman roads in the territory of San Giuliano and evolving strategies for control of the surrounding landscape. Road survey conducted as part of the San Giuliano Archaeological Project (SGARP) has problematized...
Aportes a la Interpretación Arqueológica de la Zona Sur en Honduras. (2018)
Los departamentos de Choluteca y El Paraíso al sur de Honduras cuentan con un escaso registro arqueológico de asentamientos prehispánicos y coloniales. El desconocimiento de su historia deriva constantes saqueos y destrucción arqueológica, alterando el patrimonio cultural y generando un vacío histórico a las comunidades aledañas a estos sitios arqueológicos, desvinculándolas con su pasado. El Proyecto Arqueológico El Paraíso y Choluteca (PAPCH) comienza en el año 2016 como parte de los procesos...
Archaeological and Biometric Perspectives on the Diversity and Origin of African Chickens (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Essential Contributions from African to Global Archaeology" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Early agricultural systems relied on plants and animals originally carried thousands of miles by land and sea. Due to a lack of data and a greater emphasis on domestication processes, early agricultural complexes are less investigated than their domestication counterparts. This paper examines the introduction and evolution of...
The Art of Survival: Mitigating the Impacts of PTSD and Combat Stress through the Manipulation of Moral Status and Identity in the Colonial-Era Rock Art of Southern Africa (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. During the South African colonial period, settler incursion was met by indigenous resistance, sparking a series of brushfire conflicts. In the borderlands of the colony, “Bushman” bandits conducted an insurgency against colonists, facing as they did so significant traumatic stress. Being horse-borne was part of their identity, as was their association with...
Aryballos, Bowls, and Bolas: Examining the Distribution of Provincial Inka-Style Pottery in the Threatened Borderland Region of the Valles Cruceños (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Alfareros deste Inga: Pottery Production, Distribution and Exchange in the Tawantinsuyu" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. As the violent threat posed by the marauding Chiriguanos emerged in the terminal decades of Tawantinsuyu, the Inkas and their local allies made a concerted push to turn the southeastern imperial frontier into a strategically fortified zone and enhance their ability to repel the lowland invaders....
Between Casas Grandes and Salado: The Establishment of an Indigenous Borderland in the Ancient American Southwest/Mexican Northwest (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Whereas archaeologists continue to investigate processes of culture contact and frontier construction in hunter-gatherer and small agricultural societies using models primarily originally created and applied for ancient states and modern geopolitics, historians have recently begun investigating Indigenous borderlands. My dissertation, which includes the...
Borderland Processes and the Question of BMAC in NE Iran (2018)
How frontiers and borders are conceptualized in archaeology is critically influenced by the approaches and perspectives in culture contact research. Absence of written documents from Bronze Age Central Asia severely limits the application of such theories. The nature of the Bronze Age civilization of Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex (BMAC) in Central Asia, and its dispersion to neighboring NE Iran has been a long-lasting question in study of Prehistoric Western Asia. This paper aims to...
Boundaries of the Past as Viewed through the Fences of Today: Shifting Methods of Archaeological Inquiry in the Southern Maya Lowlands (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Making and Breaking Boundaries in the Maya Lowlands: Alliance and Conflict across the Guatemala–Belize Border" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. An exploration of how modern borders of different kinds have influenced, and sometimes impeded, our understanding of ancient borders and territories. The Guatemala-Belize border has ramifications in terms of the ways in which scholars interact and how the archaeology is...
Boundary Dynamics between Chichen Itza and Ek Balam (2018)
Social boundaries of the past and present are usually nebulous, contested, and fluid. In this paper we examine the ancient towns and villages between the two Maya kingdoms of Chichen Itza and Ek Balam in northern Yucatam. We hypothesize that the boundary area between these two cities in the 9th century AD was based on Classic Maya concepts of ruler-centered polities but changed dramatically in the 10th century as Chichen Itza became a fundamentally different kind of Maya city the likes of which...
Bronzes, Mortuary Ritual and the Rise of Political Power in the NE Frontier of Ancient China: A case study of Upper Xiajiadian Burials (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Recent Research on Early Chinese Borderland Cultures and Archaeological Materials" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This study focuses on manipulation of bronzes of different styles, and mortuary rituals overall, during in the emergence of political power in the northeastern frontier of ancient China. Data are presented on three richly furnished burials M101 at Nanshan’gen and M8501 and M9601 at Xiaoheishigou of the...
The Capac ñan from Chachapoyas to the Tierra adentro (2018)
The capac ñan from Chachapoyas to Moyobamba was used for centuries before another road was built for driving traffic and latest with the Marginal further on to Tarapoto. The capac ñan was used by the Incas in their conquest of Moyobamba and later to be used by the many Spanish campaigns in their search for Eldorado. This important highland/lowland route crossing the cordillera and continuing into the Ceja de Selva gave access to coveted resources from both sides but also facilitated war parties...
A Case for Islam: Bioarchaeological Research on the Ottoman Period in Southeast Europe (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Mind the Gap: Exploring Uncharted Territories in Medieval European Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The introduction of Ottoman control and the arrival of Islam in Southeast Europe during the late medieval period greatly influenced both historical and modern populations. In spite of this impact, this cultural and religious influence remains a topic understudied in archaeology. With Christianity the dominant...
Castle Ballintober, County Roscommon, Ireland: The Castles in Communities Project (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Exploring the Gaelic Social Order through Castle Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Castles in Communities program at Ballintober Castle in County Roscommon, Ireland has been studying the construction sequence of the castle and the newly discovered deserted medieval village in the hinterlands. As we work with the community of Ballintober we are faced with a conundrum of how best to present our results as...
Centering the Periphery: The Case of Southeast China during the Early Imperial Period (2018)
First incorporated into China in 214 BCE, the southern region known as Lingnan (which consists of the present-day provinces of Guangxi and Guangdong), has traditionally been regarded as one of China’s peripheral regions. Not only was Lingnan distant from imperial centers in the north, its native pre-literate ‘Yue’ inhabitants spoke non-sinitic languages and were known for their distinctive ‘uncivilized’ behaviors. Along with its location at the southern margin of modern China’s territory, the...
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...
Classic through Postclassic in El Salvador (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Postclassic Mesoamerica: The View from the Southern Frontier" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Beginning with the first formal archaeological studies nearly a century ago, findings in the territory of El Salvador have been recognized as attesting to the establishment of Nahua migrants. This has commonly been interpreted, in conjunction with ethnohistoric accounts, as resulting from a single episode of what has been...
Coba's Periphery and Rethinking Site Boundaries (2018)
Time and again the application of new technologies has allowed archaeologists to rethink their understandings of ancient cultural landscapes. Lidar, in particular, is one technology that has rapidly transformed our analytical capabilities by simultaneously providing wide regional and finely localized views of archaeological sites. In this paper, we present new lidar data that is reshaping our understanding of the Northern Maya Lowland metropolis of Coba. In particular we discuss features on...
The Cocospera Valley in the Prehistoric, Protohistoric and Missión Period: A Corridor of Cultural Exchange? (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Transcending Boundaries and Exploring Pasts: Current Archaeological Investigations of the Arizona-Sonora Borderlands" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. There is a western geographical gap between the Trincheras and Hohokam archaeological traditions in the State of Sonora, Mexico. This area is the Cocospera Valley where the prehistoric sites have artifacts from Trincheras, Hohokam and Casas Grandes traditions. In the...
Community Identity in the Jornada: Untangling Patterns of Aggregation and Abandonment at Cottonwood Spring Pueblo (LA 175), an El Paso Phase Village (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Recent Research at Jornada Mogollon Sites in South-Central New Mexico" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ongoing excavations at Cottonwood Spring Pueblo (LA 175) suggest population aggregation within the El Paso Phase (A.D. 1300-1450) Jornada Cultural Region may have consisted of distinct self-identified groups integrated into one multi-ethnic community. Comparing the excavations at Area A, a large plaza orientated...
Comparative Multiethnic Predation in Borderland Context (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Beyond “Barbarians”: Dimensions of Military Organization at the Bleeding Edge of the Premodern State" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The 1847–1848 US annexation of northern Mexico is often referred to as a “bloodless conquest,” in that there was no organized military defense. Yet we see dozens of small-scale guerilla actions by units of mixed-ethnic attribution against Americans. Observers noted that their “Mexican”...
Confronting Myths of Isolation in Pre-Columbian Appalachia (2018)
In recent decades, ethnographers, historians, and historical archaeologists have refuted popular myths about southern Appalachia that characterize the region as an isolated geographic periphery and, by extension, a cultural backwater. However, these perceptions continue to color interpretations of Appalachia’s deeper past, despite the region’s long tradition of rigorous archaeological research. Some scholars have suggested that pre-Columbian Appalachia has remained peripheral in archaeological...