and Conflict (Other Keyword)
26-50 (77 Records)
This is an abstract from the "Warfare and the Origins of Political Control " session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Past urbanism is usually reconstructed as a positive development, with cities presented as locations of economic efficiency, technological innovation, and productive social networks. But past cities also presented challenges, as sources of disease, inequalities, and high mortality. At Tell Brak (NE Syria/northern Mesopotamia), urban growth...
A Flash of Silver in the Swamp: The Identification of a B-24 Crash Site from WWII in the Lowcountry of South Carolina (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. On Dec. 15, 1944, a B-24 took off on a night navigation mission from Chatham Air Field in Georgia, headed to Florida. The crew of nine were training to patrol the East Coast for enemy submarines. Fifteen minutes into the flight, engine #1 caught fire. The bomber crashed less than five minutes later into swampland in the lowcountry of South Carolina. This...
From Enfilades to Medieval Caves: An In-Progress Report from the Medieval Roman Archaeological Survey of Kalymnos (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Aegean island of Kalymnos was unsurprisingly transformed by conflict between Roman and Arab Caliphate forces through the early Middle Ages; atypically among its neighbors, the end of antiquity seems to have produced a more durable and connected Kalymnian community, compared to that which came before. This paper expands on earlier GIS analyses of the...
From Mountain Worship to Guarding the Sacred Lakes: Surveys of Cerro Canoncillo, Cerro Prieto Espinal, and Cerro Santonte (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Bridging Time, Space, and Species: Over 20 Years of Archaeological Insights from the Cañoncillo Complex, Jequetepeque Valley, Peru, Part 2" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. At the heart of the community, Cerro Cañoncillo and its lakes formed enduring sacred spaces across the landscape. In this paper, we explore in greater depth how the ceremonial centers of the region interrelated spatially and symbolically with...
Geophysical Survey of the Friendly Fire Incident, French and Indian War, Pennsylvania (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Fort Ligonier, constructed in 1758, was the advance post and the last in the line of supply forts constructed for Brigadier-General John Forbes’ Expedition to take Fort Duquesne during the French and Indian War. A young George Washington was a Colonel stationed at Fort Ligonier. On November 12, 1758, there was a small skirmish between a British Virginia...
he Best Offense Is a Good Defense: Monumental Defensive Works at La Cuernavilla (2023)
This is an abstract from the "La Cuernavilla, Guatemala: A Maya Fortress and Its Environs" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The ancient Maya center La Cuernavilla is well known for its defensive features and its role as a fortress located between the Classic Maya cities of Tikal and El Zotz in the Buenavista Valley of modern-day Guatemala. Excavations of the defensive features as well as the analysis of the artifacts collected during excavations...
Hillfort Horizons: Rethinking Violence and Egalitarianism during the Andean Late Intermediate Period (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. In the Central Andes, the era immediately prior to the consolidation of the Inca Empire is known as the Late Intermediate period (LIP, ca. AD 1000–1450), traditionally seen as a "stateless" time between episodes of political centralization. Both Inca and Spanish accounts from the early...
How to Find the Unfindable: A New Method for Replicating Perishable Indigenous Technologies of Conflict (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Defining Perishables: The How, What, and Why of Perishables and Their Importance in Understanding the Past" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This study provides an innovative multidisciplinary model operationalizing the study of perishable weaponry through experimental archaeology. In this model, I focus on war clubs, a type of Indigenous weapon commonly found across North America. Most of these weapons were made wholly...
Hunter-Gatherer Violence in the Middle Holocene Baikal Region: A Probable Massacre at Shamanka II (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Northeast Asian Prehistoric Hunter-Gather Lifeways: Multidisciplinary, Individual Life History Approach" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Violence was uncommon among the Middle Holocene hunter-gatherers of Siberia’s Baikal region (<5%), and lethal violence even less so (~1%). At the site of Shamanka II, however, 11 (or 85%) of 13 interred Early Bronze Age (EBA; 4970⎼3470 cal. BP) individuals exhibit evidence of...
Ideological and Material Conditions Shaping the Nature of Warfare in Maya Society (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Warfare and the Origins of Political Control " session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent investigations have revealed substantial evidence of fortifications and physical conflicts in the Maya lowlands. Nonetheless, warfare in Maya society never led to the development of stable conquest states or empires. Factors affecting this process may have included the ideological and material conditions of this region. The ideology...
Infrastructures of Race and War: Tracing Historic Roads in Postwar Quintana Roo (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The last half of the nineteenth century was for Yucatan, like much of the Atlantic World, a time of extreme tumult. Having recently gained its independence from Spain, the fledgling nation found itself plunged into numerous violent, political conflicts. None had so lasting an impact as what has become commonly known as the Caste War of Yucatan. Arguably...
Inside and Out: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Injured Bodies in Industrializing London (1760–1901) (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Skin and Bone examines the embodied experience of injury, accidents, and interpersonal violence of over 65,000 Londoners during the Industrial Revolution (1760–1901). Osteoarchaeological datasets from the Museum of London Centre for Human Bioarchaeology in combination with contemporary hospital (Middlesex, Royal London, Guy’s, St. Thomas’) and criminal...
Investigating Imperialism on Early Hellenistic Cyprus: Excavations at Pyla-Vigla, 2019 and 2022 (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Since 2008, the Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project (PKAP) has been excavating the site of Pyla-Vigla, located on a small plateau near Larnaca, Cyprus. Early small-scale excavations (2008, 2009, 2012, 2018) revealed what appears to be an early Hellenistic (330-250 BCE) fortification. In the early Hellenistic period, Cyprus was undergoing a massive...
It Takes a Village to Defend a Village: Women, Elders, and Children in Indigenous Resistance during the Contact and Colonial Periods of Central New Mexico (1539-1696) (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Warfare and conflict are almost always described in terms of male-centered actions. But it is clear in many cases, such as those during the Contact period in the Western Hemisphere, that conflict often involved entire communities thrown into struggles for their freedom and survival. This was quite evident during the first explorations of the American...
The Killing of Captives by the Moche of Northern Coastal Peru: Veneration or Violation? (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Ritual Violence and Human Sacrifice in the Ancient Andes: New Directions in the Field" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeological and Bioarchaeological data and a rich iconographic tradition provide complementary perspectives on the taking and killing of captives by the Moche (c. AD 200-900). While these practices clearly had important ritual aspects, there continues to be debate over the source of captives and...
Land, War, and Optimal Territorial Size in Neolithic Society: Why New Guineans Rarely ever Occupied the Territories They had Conquered (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Not infrequently, New Guinean warriors managed in war to displace or annihilate the members of a neighboring territory, yet almost never did they then move in and occupy the territory they had won. Instead, they either left it vacant, allowed allies to take it over, or (most commonly) invited the original owners back a couple of years later. This seemingly...
Landscapes of Insecurity in Huancavelica, Peru: Infrastructure, Emplacement, and Quotidian Life in Volatile Surroundings (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Late Intermediate Period (1000-1400 CE) in the Central Andean highlands is characterized by balkanization and warfare, a pattern that is materialized through the construction of hilltop forts (pukaras) and skeletal trauma observed from Ancash to the Titicaca Basin. After a decades-long hiatus in academic research in Huancavelica, Peru, which was...
A Latin American choreography: entanglements of solidarity and collaboration for a forensic archaeology (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Weaving Epistemes: Community-Based Research in Latin America" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A Latin American choreography: entanglements of solidarity and collaboration for a forensic archaeology Latin America was and still is one of the most prominent areas for the development of forensic archaeology and anthropology. It is a common sense between researchers of the field that this latin america perspective started...
Leaving a Calling Card: Why Is This Rock Art Here? (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Painting the Past: Interpretive Approaches in Global Rock Art Research" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Plains warfare is well known for its “gamesmanship” aspect, but one of the less emphasized parts of that is the practice of leaving a “calling card” flouting your entry into an enemy’s territory and your success against him. Recent research has located more than a dozen “out of place” northern Plains rock art sites....
Life before Death: A Bioarchaeological Study of the Biosocial Histories of Human Sacrifices at Pampa la Cruz (Montículo 2), Moche Valley, Peru (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Ritual Violence and Human Sacrifice in the Ancient Andes: New Directions in the Field" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Human sacrifice is a form of ritual theater staged by emerging empires to articulate new power asymmetries and legitimize imperial enterprises. The culmination of the event is the death of the victim because ritual homicide transforms the body into an efficacious offering while generating vivid images...
Lithic Debitage, Thermal Damage, and Other Signs of Conflict (2023)
This is an abstract from the "La Cuernavilla, Guatemala: A Maya Fortress and Its Environs" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. While fortifications speak to the potential for conflict, indicators of actual warfare are difficult to discern. The ancient Maya produced few lithic implements that were strictly martial in nature. Furthermore, evidence of destruction events, such as large-scale fires, preserve poorly in tropical environments. However, recent...
Military Encounters between Vascones and Barbarians in Francia and Iberia between the End of Roman Rule and the Eleventh Century (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. Pursuit of Basque national identity in the Western Pyrenees Mountains emphasized their linguistic isolation (i.e., last speakers of a non-Indo-European language) and purported ethnic antiquity (i.e., residents since, if not before, the Last Glacial Maximum). This overshadowed inquiry on...
New Developments with the Shield-Bearing Warrior Motif in the Rocky Mountains (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Painting the Past: Interpretive Approaches in Global Rock Art Research" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The shield-bearing warrior, a widely recognized rock art motif on the Northwestern Plains, has a more complex pedigree than archeologists originally recognized. Examples in northcentral Montana are radiocarbon dated to the Late Archaic while other sites in southwestern Montana may date to the same time. Adding to the...
Northern Iroquoian Conflict: From Coercive Adoption to Community Destruction in a Matter of Decades (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. Although the cause of the enmity between the Huron-Wendat and the Haudenosaunee is unknown, it commenced in the late 1400s and intensified in the early to mid-1500s, impacting the north shore of Lake Ontario, eastern Ontario, the Ottawa Valley, and central New York. This is demonstrated...
Osteological Evidence from a Civil War–Era Grave and Surgeon’s Pit in Colonial Williamsburg (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Individuals Known and Unknown: Case Studies from Two Burial Contexts at Colonial Williamsburg" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this paper, we report on the study of human skeletal remains recently discovered near a powder magazine in Williamsburg, VA, the site of a mass Confederate grave. Osteological analysis of four discrete burials and additional remains recovered from a nearby surgeon’s pit indicates that these...