Social and Political Organization: States and Empires (Other Keyword)
51-75 (115 Records)
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...
Inner Asian Nomads and World-System Analysis (2024)
This is an abstract from the "World-Systems and Globalization in Archaeology: Assessing Models of Intersocietal Connections 50 Years since Wallerstein’s “The Modern World-System”" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. World-systems analysis was created to describe capitalism. However, in 1989, Abu-Lughod expanded the temporal boundaries. She described the world-system of the thirteenth century, and now it has become customary to talk about Mongolian...
Interactions, Geopolitical Mastery, and Empire: What Local-Level Political Machinations Tell Us about Imperial Strategy during the Late Prehispanic Period (2023)
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...
The Irish Medieval Patron-Client State in World Perspective (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The state of the O’Briens, at times called the Kingdom of Limerick, lasted from the mid-eleventh century until it accepted the sovereignty of Henry VIII at the end of the sixteenth century. In its features it conforms to the model of the patron-client state that William Sanders formulated to distill the similarities in organization that were apparent in...
Isotopes and the Body Politic: Estimating Residential Origins at the Imperial Inka site of Patallacta, Peru (2019)
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...
The Kaanul Dynasty and the Early History of the Northwest Petén (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. 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...
Landscape and Labor: Bones and Bodies of the Tiwanaku State (2018)
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’...
Local Impact of Tiwanaku at the site of Pinami, Cochabamba: Synthesis of Diachronic Ceramic, Household, Food Production, Mortuary and Isotopic Data (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Tiwanaku state has been shown to have had varied methods for interacting with and influencing its peripheries. This poster presents a synthesis of multi-year excavations at the site of Pinami in the Central Valley of Cochabamba that provides both diachronic depth from the Late Formative, Middle Horizon and Early Intermediate and a wide range of data...
Macedonian presence on the Crnobuki Gradiste Riches to Rags: Year 1 (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Cal Poly Humboldt and the Museum Bitola initiated a long term research project in the Pelagonia region of North Macedonia, this paper presents the results of the initial field season. Our expectations were that the site was the location of a remote Macedonian garrison defending against Roman incursions. We conducted excavations, remote sensing and in...
The Many Lives of Wari Dogs: A Summary of Zooarchaeological and Isotopic Research (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Dogs in the Archaeological Record" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The widespread perception of the dog as humans’ closest companion species allows their remains to be used as proxies for human diet and mobility patterns. But these highly social animals held their own variable social and economic roles. Therefore, dog remains can provide information on the organization of animal management systems in past complex...
The Materiality of Surveillance: Scale, Complexity, and Polity (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. Textual and archaeological evidence make clear that most ancient polities were concerned with surveillance in some way. However, the scale of material investment in surveillance suggests different motivations in different contexts. This paper compares the material signatures of surveillance in Greek Bronze Age...
The Matlatzinca-Aztec City of Tlacotepec: Results of the Proyecto Arqueológico Tlacotepec/Tlacotepec Archaeological Project (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In 1565, the Matlatzinca Pablo Ocelotl and the Nahua Alonso Gonzales appeared before a Spanish judge in lawsuit over lands in the community of Tlacotepec, in the Toluca Valley of Central Mexico. While describing the rise and fall of their families under Matlatzinca, Aztec, and Spanish rule, both swore their families were long time residents of community. ...
Memories of New Pasts in Cuzco and Huarochirí (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. For decades, historical and anthropological understanding of the late prehispanic Andes was based in large measure on the written texts produced during the periods of Spanish invasion and colonization. However, while scholarly work based on these documents has long emphasized that control and manipulation of social memory was central to the expansion of the...
Modeling the social demography of a Classic Maya city-state, the case of El Perú-Waka’, Guatemala (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper attempts to model Classic Maya society and social dynamics, as expressed at the ancient city-state of El Perú-Waka, Guatemala. Large-scale ceramic analysis, combined with traditional excavation and an ambitious test-pitting program, allow for novel perspectives on the internal functioning of this complex Native American society. The urban...
Monte Lima, a Tallán Community in Late Intermediate Period Chira Valley, Perú (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Monte Lima is one of five large Late Intermediate sites in the lower Chira Valley described by Richardson et al. (1990) as representing a surge in local complexity resulting from Sicán and Chimú expansion to the far north coast. In 2023, we conducted preliminary excavations across this multicomponent site to establish chronology, better understand...
A Morphological Analysis of Sandstone Temples in the Provinces of the Angkorian Khmer Empire (2019)
This is an abstract from the "The Current State of Archaeological Research across Southeast Asia" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeological research in Cambodia was traditionally relatively narrow in scope. Our knowledge of the Khmer Empire (9th to 15th century CE ) has been primarily informed via two lines of evidence: epigraphic sources, especially in the form of temple inscriptions, and art historical analysis of monumental architecture....
Nasca-Wari Relationships on the Greater Peruvian South Coast (2018)
The Middle Horizon was a period of unprecedented interaction and change in the Nasca region. Nasca was one of the earliest places where Wari influence was found, extending back to the pre-imperial Huarpa culture of the Early Intermediate Period. It is also one of the few coastal regions with solid evidence of Wari colonization. However, the relationship was not a simple, unilineal one with Wari the dominant core society and Nasca the passive peripheral society. Instead a bilateral relationship...
Negotiating Empires: Village Dynamics in Naxcivan, Azerbaijan (2019)
This is an abstract from the "The South Caucasus Region: Crossroads of Societies & Polities. An Assessment of Research Perspectives in Post-Soviet Times" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeological research on empires has focused on centers and periphery, with much less emphasis on the interstices of empires. During the first century of the common era, the polities of the Southern Caucasus were located between the competing empires of Arsacid...
Networks of Power: Sandstone Temple Production in the Provinces of the Angkorian Khmer Empire (2018)
Anthropological research suggests that early states and empires frequently relied on state-sponsored building projects to produce networks of state control and identity on the landscape. The production and use of monumental architecture, however, can also be influenced by local agency, resilience and/or resistance, and degrees of socio-political autonomy. Rather than a homogenous blanket of state/imperial power, the result is a mosaic of core state control and local choices across the landscape....
One Hundred Years of Research at Huaca del Loro, Nasca, Peru (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Almost 100 Years since Julio C. Tello: Research at Huaca del Loro, Nasca, Peru" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. It has been almost 100 years since Julio C. Tello, the father of Peruvian archaeology, and his team first investigated the site of Huaca del Loro in Nasca, Peru. During this time the site has been interpreted as a cemetery, a settlement with both elites and commoners, a possible highland Huarpa site, the...
Partnering for Power: Castillo de Huarmey Relations with the Wari (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. By Middle Horizon Epoch 2 (AD 800–850) the Wari polity was a generation old and assumed to reflect a complex hegemony based on ruins of a cosmopolitan capital in the Ayacucho-Huanta valley and artifact associations among ethnically distinct communities throughout the Andes. The complexity includes shared artistic...
Place-Making, Fire, and the Praxis of Becoming Angkor (2024)
This is an abstract from the "States, Confederacies, and Nations: Reenvisioning Early Large-Scale Collectives." session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The ninth- to fifteenth-century Angkorian state was premodern Southeast Asia’s earliest large-scale collective, and its roots extend back to an early first-century CE polity described as Funan, and then to a confederation of successor states called Chenla. Place-making was intrinsic to Angkorian rulership:...
Plow Zone Archaeology in a Wari Imperial Center (2018)
The immense size of most Wari Imperial administrative centers has limited the breadth of our understanding of the social, political, ritual and economic activities that may have occurred within these large rectilinear compounds. In order to address these limitations, the 2017 Nasca Headwaters Archaeological Project excavation season at Incawasi attempted to apply a more traditionally North American methodology to six 50x50 meter Wari patio groups in order to draw broad conclusions about the...
Preliminary Analysis of Flaked and Ground Stone from Aventura, Belize (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Households at Aventura: Life and Community Longevity at an Ancient Maya City" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Household investigations at Aventura recovered several primary stone materials common in northern Belize and elsewhere in the Maya Lowlands. Chert and chalcedony is common as well as a high relative proportion of obsidian indicating households had reliable access to tool stone. Ready and reliable access...
Preliminary Investigations into the Site of Chullpa K’asa in Southwestern Bolivia (2018)
The site of Chullpa K’asa, located in the Potosí Department of southwestern Bolivia, covers an area of around 45 hectares and contains the ruins of dozens of Prehispanic buildings. This poster presents the results of preliminary investigations of the site based on pedestrian ground survey and an assessment of artifacts housed at a nearby Indigenous museum. Systematic survey and mapping, which included the recording of surface artifacts at 43 locations across the site, revealed two areas of...