Social and Political Organization: States and Empires (Other Keyword)
101-125 (136 Records)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. San Ignacio is located in the Amatzinac Valley of Morelos, approximately 10 kilometers south of the Formative site of Chalcatzingo, where it was the regional center and largest site in Eastern Morelos during the Classic period (300 - 600 CE). Previous studies argued based on regional settlement data that San Ignacio was a possible Teotihuacan...
Revolt, Resistance, and Long-Term Colonial Change in Roman Mediterranean Gaul (2025)
This is an abstract from the "Rising Up Against Authority: Archaeological Approaches to Rebellion" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. As with other conquered provinces of the Roman Empire, Mediterranean Gaul witnessed a number of large-scale revolts against Roman colonial rule, spanning multiple generations from the initial Roman conquest in 125 BC to ca. 74 BC. In addition to some textual references, there is good archaeological evidence for these...
Rises and Falls of Uaxactun Dynasty: Combining Epigraphic and Archaeological Evidence (2019)
This is an abstract from the "At the Interface the Use of Archaeology and Texts in Research" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The dynastic history of Uaxactun is one of the most ancient among the political centers of the Maya Lowlands in the Preclassic and Classic periods. The beginning of history of a dynasty concerns to the III cent. BC, and its end to the final years of the IX cent. AD. On an extent more than a thousand-year history the dynasty...
Roads and Rivers: The Importance of Regional Transportation Networks for Early Urbanization in Central Italy (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Regional Settlement Networks Analysis: A Global Comparison" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ancient regional routes were vital for interactions between settlements and deeply influenced the development of past societies and their “complexification” (e.g., urbanization). For example, terrestrial routes required resources and inter-settlement cooperation to be established and maintained, and can be regarded as an...
The Role of Institutions in Imperial Formations in the Andes (2019)
This is an abstract from the "From Households to Empires: Papers Presented in Honor of Bradley J. Parker" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Bradley Parker was first and foremost a student of empire. As an Assyriologist and a budding Andeanist, he was enthralled with understanding the rise and persistence of empire from a comparative approach, and at the time of his death was building an inspirational model to understand imperial expansion from the...
The Role of Pachacamac and Castillo de Huarmey in the Wari World: A Comparison (2023)
This is an abstract from the "A Decade of Multidisciplinary Research at Castillo de Huarmey, Peru" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Excavations since 2005 at Pachacamac (Lurin Valley) near Lima and since 2010 at Castillo de Huarmey (Huarmey Valley) have provided important new evidence about the character and chronology of these two sites, considered by Menzel to be religious and political centers of the Wari Empire. Both sites were contemporaneous,...
The Roman Basilica at Freixo, Portugal: Ongoing Excavations and Current Interpretations Regarding the Role and Regional Significance of this Hinterland Community (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Excavations at Freixo, Portugal, continue to provide substantive data regarding the nature of Roman Imperial organization and decline in the southern Iberian Peninsula. Of specific interest is the role of hinterland communities within the overarching sociopolitical and ideological landscape. Recent discoveries at the Freixo Basilica suggest material...
A Sacred Frontier? Inka Settlement at Salapunqu (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. During the 14th-16th centuries, the Inka Empire transformed Peru’s Urubamba Valley, located in the piedmont foothills of the eastern Andes, into an integrated landscape that was both economically productive and spiritually sacred. Extensive surveys have identified a shift whereby the Inka appear to have relocated settlements at higher elevations to the...
The Sebittu Project: A Report on the 2023 Pilot Season (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The preliminary season of the Sebittu Project on the Erbil Plain of Iraqi Kurdistan was conducted over four weeks this summer. The project includes seven Neo-Assyrian sites on the plain with the goal of documenting the agrarian economy during the Neo-Assyrian period (c. 900-600 BC) in northern Iraq, the heartland of the Assyrian empire. The initial...
“Serpent Emperor” and “Serpent Co-ruler”: New Evidence on Kanul Hegemony under K’ahk’ Ti’ Ch’ich’ (2024)
This is an abstract from the "The Rise and Apogee of the Classic Maya Kaanu’l Hegemonic State at Dzibanche" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In 2017 previously unknown mid-sixth-century Kanul king K’ahk’ Ti’ Ch’ich’ Aj Saakil was identified in Classic Maya hieroglyphic inscriptions. He acceded as “high king” (kalomte) in AD 550 and was responsible for the defeat of Tikal in AD 562 and the expansion of Dzibanche hegemony through the Southern...
“Serpent Emperor”: The Reign of K’ahk’ Ti’ Ch’ich’ and the Origins of Dzibanché Hegemony (2021)
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. Recent studies of the inscriptions related to the Kaanul dynasty has revealed a new ruler named K’ahk’ Ti’ Ch’ich’. He is mentioned in various Maya sites (El Peru, Uaxactun, Naranjo) as a high king and overlord with a wide dominion. His accession in 550 CE is recorded on the wooden Lintel 3 from...
The Shadow Realm: How Belizean Archaeology Has Illuminated the Maya Postclassic Era (2024)
This is an abstract from the "“The Center and the Edge”: How the Archaeology of Belize Is Foundational for Understanding the Ancient Maya" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Without Belizean archaeological data, we would know very little about the Maya Postclassic period (CE 950–1530). While viewed as a period of lesser cultural development by earlier researchers, Postclassic archaeological research in Belize was published as early as 1898 but...
Shifting Regimes at La Corona: Political Resilience of Classic Maya “Secondary” Center (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Regimes of the Ancient Maya" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Data from investigations at the archaeological site of La Corona reflect the role that secondary sites had for political integration in the Maya lowlands. Comparing what the hieroglyphic texts suggest with what the material culture of the secondary sites indicates, it is possibly to assess the nature of La Corona political regime before, during, and after its...
Skilled Craftsmen, Ancestors Cult, and Hegemonic Strategies of the Wari Empire (2018)
The comparison of new evidence obtained from Pachacamac and Castillo de Huarmey sites sheds new light on the character of Wari presence on the Peruvian Coast. Both sites are contemporary (Late Middle Horizon, ca. 800 - 1100 AD) and most new information comes from funerary contexts. In both cases, imitations of foreign styles, originated in the south coast and highlands, as well as the local ones are present in the iconography found in the offerings. Recent analyzes lead us to the conclusion that...
Social and Geographic Associations of Cotton-sized Spindle Whorls in South-central Veracruz, Mexico (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Textile Tools and Technologies as Evidence for the Fiber Arts in Precolumbian Societies" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The western lower Papaloapan basin in south-central Veracruz was subject to systematic survey and surface collection in several blocks of terrain. An initial analysis of spindle whorls from one survey block showed cotton-sized whorls were relatively abundant during the Classic and Postclassic...
Something Different or More of the Same? Lowland Maya Polities and Regimes as Viewed from El Perú-Waka’, Guatemala (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Regimes of the Ancient Maya" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Classic period (250–900 CE) politics of the Lowland Maya have been the subject of intense debate among scholars for decades. Having long ago moved beyond unsupported models of peaceful theocracies and vacant ceremonial centers, investigators nevertheless continue to wrestle with characterizing the nature of Classic political structure. This paper will...
Sowing the Seeds of Empire: Early Statecraft and the Emergence of Indigenous Agriculture on the Mongolian Steppe (ca. 250 BC–AD 150) (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Advances in Macrobotanical and Microbotanical Archaeobotany Part 1" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The end of the first millennium BC (ca. 250 BC–AD 150) marks the genesis of Xiongnu, eastern Eurasia’s first nomadic state, which emerged from central Mongolia to successfully integrate one of the largest-scale political configurations in prehistory. This transformative period also marks the appearance of Mongolia’s...
Statecraft, Politics, and Kingship in the Northern Maya Lowlands, with a Focus on the Puuc Region (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Regimes of the Ancient Maya" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper examines the nature of northern Maya lowland statecraft, politics, and kingship and how they differ and parallel that of the southern lowlands. In keeping with the goal of the symposium this paper focuses on the concept of “regime” recognizing the Maya, especially when considering the northern and southern areas, created distinct political...
Styles, Technology and Identities: Origins and Uses of Provincial Inca Ceramics in Pueblo Viejo-Pucará, a Huarochiri’s Mitmaquna Settlement in the Lurin Valley (2018)
Distribution analysis of provincial Inca pottery in different layers of the residences of Pueblo Viejo-Pucará, including the palace of the curaca, will serve as a starting point to define the differences in access to diverse vessel forms and observe the contexts of use in domestic, funeral, public and ceremonial areas. The excavations in residential and ceremonial architecture carried out in Pueblo Viejo-Pucará, a Late Horizon (1470-1560 A.D.) urban settlement, provided rich and varied evidence...
Surveillance and Intelligence Gathering in the Urartian and Assyrian Empires (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Archaeologies of Surveillance: Seeing and Power in the Material World" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. By the Middle Bronze Age (ca. 2000–1600 BCE), two distinct fortified landscape styles had developed in western Asia: fortifications surrounding grand urban complexes and the "fortified regional network" (FRN), a rural, regional system comprising fortresses, forts, towers, and other structures situated along roads and...
Taki Onqoy and Idolatrous Dances: Archaeological Approaches to an Underground Religious Rebellion (2025)
This is an abstract from the "Rising Up Against Authority: Archaeological Approaches to Rebellion" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Though the term rebellion connotes direct, violent uprisings to authority, resistance of disenfranchised peoples can take subtle or indirect forms such as religious revitalization or rejection of dominant or colonizer cultural practices. In the 16th century central Peruvian Andes, Taki Onqoy (Quechua: dancing/singing...
Taking the Palace out of Palatial Control (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Hierarchical models of political and economic organization still pervade the scholarship of complex societies in the Bronze Age Mediterranean. This is especially the case for those societies such as Late Bronze Age Greece identified as “palatial” in which the palace and its officials are accorded near complete control over the economy. There is much...
The Team for the New Age: Naranjo and Holmul under Kaanul’s Sway (2021)
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. The paper presents the results of the last decade of archeological and epigraphic research that clarify the history of the reigns of Holmul and Naranjo during the expansion of the Dzibanché dynasty in eastern Petén in the second half of the sixth century and the first half of the seventh century...
Territorial and Border Surveillance in the Greek World (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Archaeologies of Surveillance: Seeing and Power in the Material World" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Greek world formed a giant mosaic of city-states and leagues stretching over the entire Mediterranean and delimited by political borders. Like today, crossing a border was not innocuous, as states imposed their rule of law and enforced strict surveillance over their territories. This paper examines archaeological...
They Defended Their Rights: memory, strategy and vigilance in premodern Scandinavia (2025)
This is an abstract from the "Rising Up Against Authority: Archaeological Approaches to Rebellion" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper reflects on the roles of sociopolitical paradigms and memory in the staging of resistance, rebellion and civil war, using case studies from Iron Age through Early Modern Scandinavia. Various event cascades always precede and follow more 'visible' episodes commonly described in textual records, but are...