Social and Political Organization: States and Empires (Other Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Maya B. Krause. Tiffiny A. Tung. Steve Kosiba.

This is an abstract from the "Living and Dying in Mountain and Highland Landscapes" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper uses a bioarchaeological approach to examine the morbidity profiles of highland communities in the Cusco region of Peru during the centuries that witnessed the rise, fluorescence, and demise of the Inka Empire (ca. 1300-1550 CE). Through original analysis of human skeletons from the sites of Huanacauri and Matagua and a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kristin Landau.

In the early 2000s, Mesoamerican archaeologists adopted the "dynamic" model of state organization, positing that political centralization strengthened and diminished over time. Such fluctuations are due primarily to the inherent tension between the institutions of kinship and kingship, and consequent struggle for power in political, economic, and religious spheres. I argue that the intermediate scale of the neighborhood is best suited for analyzing how local- and state-level power structures...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Francisco Estrada-Belli. Sandra Balanzario.

This is an abstract from the "New Light on Dzibanché and on the Rise of the Snake Kingdom’s Hegemony in the Maya Lowlands" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Dzibanché is an archaeological zone in southern Quintana Roo encompassing several large ceremonial complexes, Dzibanché, Tutil, Kinichna and Lamay connected by causeways. According to contemporary texts, it was the early capital of the Kaanul (Snake) kingdom with vast hegemonic influence across...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Luke Auld-Thomas.

This paper presents research carried out by members of the Proyecto Regional Arqueologico La Corona at the site of El Achiotal since 2009, with emphasis on new findings since 2015. Occupation at the site spans the Late Preclassic and Early Classic periods (roughly the 1st to 5th Centuries AD, with the possibility of some earlier occupation). An inscribed stela discovered in 2015 provides critical insight into the geopolitics of the Early Classic period and establishes greater time-depth for some...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Geraldine Huertas Sánchez.

En el valle bajo de Cañete, la élite Huarco compartía una tradición cultural similar con las élites vecinas a lo largo de la costa centro-sur; a la llegada de los incas, esta tradición se mantuvo pero reconfiguraron sus estrategias políticas y económicas. De esta manera lograron proteger sus relaciones interregionales en este territorio, con el fin de aprovechar los beneficios de la presencia inca en el valle. El Huarco, de acuerdo a los relatos etnohistóricos fue un señorío fuerte e...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Wieslaw Wieckowski.

The discovery of an undisturbed burial context at Castillo de Huarmey, bringing to light remains of Wari immediate elite members, finally embodied long discussed highest social levels of Wari Imperial elites. Until that time they characteristic was derived almost exclusively from indirect sources, mainly material remains of high quality material culture and architecture. Now, there is a chance to get a glimpse on their actual life stories, occupation, and to see their faces. Analysis of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lisa LeCount.

Here, I summarize the major research questions and results from the Actuncan Archaeological Project, which has been on-going since 2001. The project was initially designed to examine the ways Preclassic Maya leaders institutionalized political authority from the perspective of household archaeology, but has expanded to include excavation of civic architecture and remote sensing in open spaces. My research is informed by collective action theory, and the degree to which leaders engaged in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Thomas Huffman.

Salvage excavations in the 1970s at the famous capital of Great Zimbabwe, southern Africa, uncovered several residential complexes dating to Periods IVb (AD 1300-1450) and IVc (AD 1450-1550). Overall, granaries and middens surrounded closely-spaced houses of commoner families living between the Outer and Inner Perimeter Walls. These high-density concentrations stood in marked contrast to the open spaces typical of elite enclosures. One midden against the Outer Perimeter Wall yielded a copper...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kylie Quave.

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. Inka ceramic workshops have been identified in many Inka provinces, but the process of making and disseminating Inka pottery in the imperial heartland of Cuzco has been largely unknown until recently. Previously, scholars assumed Inka pottery was made in state-sponsored workshops near the urban...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Helina Woldekiros. Michael Harrower. Catherine D'Andrea.

This is an abstract from the "Cultivating Cities: Perspectives from the New and Old Worlds on Wild Foods, Agriculture, and Urban Subsistence Economies" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Local and long-distance trade and productive agricultural systems contributed to establishing complex socioeconomic institutions in the Horn of Africa between 800 BCE and 900 CE. Several important urban centers and towns, such as Yeha, Aksum, and Matara, emerged...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Milosz Giersz.

Since the fundamental work of Dorothy Menzel, it has been suggested that a new center of power and prestige arose on the North-Central Coast of Peru during the late Middle Horizon, and that its focal point was probably located in the Huarmey Valley. Unfortunately, this hypothesis has not been empirically confirmed for more than 40 years, due to the lack of strong evidence based on systematic archaeological research. Since 2010 an international team of scholars performs multidisciplinary research...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ellen Bell. Erlend Johnson. Marcello Canuto. Cassandra Bill.

This is an abstract from the "Regimes of the Ancient Maya" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. While ongoing research has clarified much about the strategies Classic period (250–900 CE) Maya rulers used to establish, integrate, and administer their Lowland Maya kingdoms, studies of frontier zones, such as the southeast edge of the Maya area, both provide insights into Maya political organization and highlight local challenges not faced by rulers in the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Curran Fitzgerald. Cyrus Banikazemi. Donna Nash.

The consolidation of Wari imperial power in the Osmore Valley was predicated on the perceived legitimacy of a common ritual ideology that situated elites and their subjects within an ordered cosmos. Recent archaeoastronomical surveys of the administrative and ceremonial citadel on Cerro Baúl and elite contexts on neighboring Cerro Mejía have identified alignments of ceremonial architecture with recurrent astronomical phenomena at both sites, suggesting that observation of the heavens reinforced...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Robert Hommon.

This is an abstract from the "Rethinking Hinterlands in Polynesia" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The eighteenth century Hawai`i Island state included more than 400 local communities divided among six districts, each with a resident elite. The king’s mobile court of as many as a thousand people frequently moved from one highly productive district core to another. The "capital" was wherever the king resided. Varying in time and space, hinterlands...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christina Conlee. Corina Kellner. Chester Walker. Aldo Noriega.

This is an abstract from the "Developments through Time on the South Coast of Peru: In Memory of Patrick Carmichael" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Excavations at the site of Huaca del Loro in the Las Trancas Valley of the Nasca drainage have uncovered a Wari settlement, a cemetery with hybrid Nasca/Wari practices, and a large habitation area possibly for local support personnel. In the Wari sector, ground-penetrating radar (GPR) identified...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jerald Ek.

This is an abstract from the "Tales of the Feathered Serpent: Refining Our Understanding of an Enigmatic Mesoamerican Being" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The personage and deity of Kukulkan/Quetzalcoatl plays a central role in indigenous historical accounts regarding the prehispanic city of Chakanputun (Champotón). However, extensive disturbances resulting from continuous occupation of Champotón from the Preclassic period into modern times has...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Manuel Calongos Curotto.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The historical accounts of the Cañete valley, recovered by the Spanish conquistadores, inform that the Incas found two different kinds of reactions to their conquest attempts: while the Guarco kingdom, in the lower valley, resisted the Incas domination; the Lunahuná kingdom, in the middle valley, supported the Inca troops and generals. While this information...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Calogero Santoro. Mauricio Uribe.

Were the Inca aware of the restrictive possibilities for labor and productivity in the extreme arid territories of the Atacama Desert of northern Chile? How did the Inca officials manage to obtain information that enabled them to identify (i) strategic enclaves for farming, installing administrative and political nodes, exploiting and processing ores, and (ii) a selection of conspicuous mountains to place hilltop shrines? Here we discuss the idea that the rapid, extensive, and efficient...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ronald Lippi. Alejandra Gudiño. Estanislao Pazmiño. Esteban Acosta.

Survey and excavation data from the western Pichincha cloud forest of northwestern Ecuador have provided tantalizing evidence of an unusual relationship between Incas and the autochthonous Yumbo populations. The monumental pool site of Tulipe, the terraced hill complex of Palmitopamba, and the pucaras of Chacapata and Capillapamba all provide an extraordinary view of the tentative, late expansion of Tawantinsuyo into the sub-Andean jungle of northern Ecuador. After a dozen seasons of excavation...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mauricio Uribe.

Los estudios arqueológicos en Chile plantearon la ausencia de una conquista incaica propiamente tal en esta parte del Desierto de Atacama, puesto que sus poblaciones se hallaban insertas dentro de sistemas de complementariedad ecológica preincaicos, cuyas cabeceras o "señoríos" se encontraban en el altiplano del lago Titicaca. Y las que, una vez anexadas al Tawantinsuyo, implicaron un dominio casi automático de las restantes entidades ubicadas en lugares más alejados como las del norte chileno,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alexander Menaker.

States and empires attempt to incorporate and transform local landscapes and cultural practices in efforts to legitimize their social orders. Research on the Inka Empire in the Andagua Valley of the Southern Peruvian Andes has shown how these processes are incomplete and become entangled with local practices and the stubborn materiality of history. This poster presents recent archaeological and anthropological research, identifying the reach and effects of Inka Empire and distinguishing local...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kasia Szremski. Carla Hernández Gravito.

This is an abstract from the "Dedication, Collaboration, and Vision, Part I: Papers in Honor of Tom D. Dillehay" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Tom Dillehay’s early research in the Peruvian Chillon valley integrated archaeological and historical methods to demonstrate that Inka imperialism was not monolithic. Critically engaging with traditional models of verticality among Andean communities, his data-rich research demonstrated that the previous...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Bethany Turner.

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. In just under a century, the Inka subjugated twelve million people across the Central Andes. As part of their governing strategies, Inca administrators relocated individuals and even entire communities throughout the empire for myriad purposes; this practice often produced constructed communities...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tomas Barrientos. Marcello Canuto. David Stuart.

This is an abstract from the "New Light on Dzibanché and on the Rise of the Snake Kingdom’s Hegemony in the Maya Lowlands" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Over the past two decades it has become increasingly clear that the ancient Maya political landscape was permeated by regional systems of political asymmetry. These hegemonic networks fluctuated through time, but the steady presence of a few especially dominant polities shows that they were a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sara Becker.

Modern, archaeological, and bioarchaeological accounts of South American Andean workers show labor divisions by age, then gender, with a focus on duality between the sexes. Within the Tiwanaku state (AD 500-1100) of Bolivia and Peru, labor was also divided across the landscape within its heartland and colonies, and especially within its multiethnic neighborhoods in the heartland city of Tiwanaku (Becker 2017). Pondering these labor communities further with a focus on data from these peoples’...