and Memory (Other Keyword)
1-25 (45 Records)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Migrations are a key feature of human populations past and present, and people moved across landscapes regardless of cultural affiliation, hierarchical structures, or place of birth. But, what does it mean when individuals and/or pieces of their remains are moved elsewhere posthumously? This paper builds upon discourse centered around social memory and...
Archaeological Immersion and the Rhythmanalysis of Place: Experimental Virtual Reality Spatial Analysis at Jatanca (Je-1023), Peru (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 1" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The phenomenon of place as it is rhythmically embodied, akin to a fabric that is collectively worn and interwoven over successive generations, unfolds at the center of our presentation. We explore the intricate meshwork of place-making, applying an...
Archaeology and the Politics of Erasure in the Middle East (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Thinking with, through, and against Archaeology’s Politics of Knowledge" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. As a discipline initially tasked with understanding non-Western histories and heritage, archaeology has functioned mainly as a technology of forgetting rather than remembering when it came to indigenous material cultures. The role of archaeology in colonizing African and South American cultures is widely explored,...
Assembling the Dead and the Living: Funerary Practices within Eastern Populations of the Southern Andes (Tucumán, Northwestern Argentina) (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Despite extensive archaeological research, surprisingly little is known about regional and interregional mortuary practices in the Southern Andes, specifically in Northwestern Argentina. Large-scale excavation carried out in El Cadillal, undertaken between 1971 and 1972, resulted in the recovery of 44 prehispanic burials associated with Candelaria dated...
Beekeeping, Ancestral Knowledge, and Interspecies Relationships: Exploring Place-Based Heritage in Yucatán (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Adventures in Beekeeping: Recent Studies in Ecology, Archaeology, History, and Ethnography in Yucatán" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In her article “Saving the Other Bees,” Eve Bratman (2020) explores the successful reintroduction of beekeeping practices associated with the stingless species Melipona beecheii in the Yucatán Peninsula, which has resulted in the species thriving following near extinction. She...
Cave of Wonder: A Sacred Topos of Maritime Identities on Kalymnos (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Social Archaeologies and Islands" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Caves often occupied prominent locations as visible landmarks or as nodal points in exchange networks and mobility routes. The paper discusses coastal sacred caves, which through the transportation of diverse material culture, provided the backdrop where maritime identities were played out. The study investigates the Late Minoan occupation phase of...
Classical Nahuatl or Language of the Aztecs: Historical Appropriation and the Enduring Legacies of (Neo)Colonialism (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Misinformation and Misrepresentation Part 2: Reconsidering “Human Sacrifice,” Religion, Slavery, Modernity, and Other European-Derived Concepts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Nahuatl, often referred to as the “Aztec language,” is one of the languages most widely identified, both in the academy and in public awareness, with prehispanic cultures. In archaeological and historical research, it often receives the name...
Contesting Social Memory in Tres Zapotes and Its Hinterland during the Epi-Olmec Period: Preliminary Results of the Proyecto Arqueologico Nestepe-Rancho Cobata (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper examines the results of the Proyecto Arqueologico Nestepe-Rancho Cobata conducted in the municipality of Santiago Tuxtla, Veracruz. The project explores the role of Olmec sculptures in the development and contestation of social memory in Tres Zapotes and its hinterland, during the Epi-Olmec period. Previous research carried out in the area show...
A Contextual Analysis of the Homol'ovi I Fauna (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the Pueblo Southwest, ethnographies documenting Indigenous-animal interactions have been used to derive sets of expectations about how Ancestral Pueblo-animals relationships may have appeared in the past. This literature has primarily been used to predict the roles (e.g., subsistence, ritual) and depositional contexts (e.g., structure type) of animals...
Corporal Animal Forms as Ritualized Bodies in Burial 5, Moon Pyramid, Teotihuacan (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Multispecies Frameworks in Archaeological Interpretation: Human-Nonhuman Interactions in the Past, Part II" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Applying a relational ontological approach to faunal bones I identify animals, secondary animal by-products, and faunal artifacts as persons—in the corporal animal forms of puma, eagle, wolf, and rattlesnake—whom actively engaged with entangled sociopolitical communities of humans....
Curated Objects in Relational Networks of the Western Arctic (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Magic, Spirits, Shamanism, and Trance" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Nineteenth-century Inuit and Yupiit living on the coasts and islands of the North Pacific inhabited a landscape populated by spirits, animal persons, and object-beings. Human observance of rules and rituals was necessary, but not sufficient, to regulate this fluid, animated ecosystem. Magical practices, deeply embedded in relational ontologies,...
Decolonizing Deposition (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Taphonomy in Focus: Current Approaches to Site Formation and Social Stratigraphy" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeologists view deposition as existing at an interesting crossroads: it is both fundamental to our basic understandings of site formation and easy to dismiss as unintentional or of secondary importance. Detailed discussions occur most frequently either to explain away issues with the archaeological...
Descifrando las transformaciones y significados en Chavín de Huántar: Un análisis de los marcadores materiales en la Plaza Circular y el atrio (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Chavín de Huántar’s Contribution to Understanding the Central Andean Formative: Results and Perspectives" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A través del tiempo, la Plaza Circular y su atrio en el monumento Chavín de Huántar han tenido mucha importancia. Durante la fase Blanco - Negro, estas áreas, tuvieron pleno funcionamiento y albergaron una diversidad de contextos, donde destaca el descubrimiento de las galerías de la...
Doctrines of Discard in the Ìjẹ̀bú Kingdom: Social Stratigraphies of Refuse Mound Deposition in Southern Nigeria, AD 1400–1900 (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Taphonomy in Focus: Current Approaches to Site Formation and Social Stratigraphy" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Ìjẹ̀bú Kingdom (southern Nigeria) was for centuries involved in far-reaching trade networks – with the inland and coastal Yorùbá ìlú (city-states), European merchants from various nations, and eventually the British Lagos Colony following its establishment in 1862. During this period, the Ìjẹ̀bú...
Early Monuments at the Maya Archaeological site of El Palmar, Campeche, Mexico (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. El Palmar has garnered considerable attention from researchers, primarily due to its numerous carved monuments. In 1936, Sir Eric Thompson’s exploration initially reported 44 stelae and several altars at its Main Group. However, despite sporadic studies conducted by Tatiana Proskouriakoff and others in subsequent decades, systematic research was lacking,...
The Ethics of Macaw Keeping in the Prehistoric Southwest and Northwest Mexico (2023)
This is an abstract from the "If Animals Could Speak: Negotiating Relational Dynamics between Humans and Animals" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper considers the ethical components of prehistoric macaw husbandry practices in the cultural areas of the US Southwest and Northern Mexico. Within many traditional Native American cosmological schemes, humans and animals occupy a shared social world with reciprocal responsibilities toward one...
Fat, Potency, and Respect: The Holy Triad of Human-Animal Relationships in the Paleolithic (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Embodied Essence: Anthropological, Historical, and Archaeological Perspectives on the Use of Body Parts and Bodily Substances in Religious Beliefs and Practices" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Animals played a major role in human subsistence, well-being, and relationship with the world around them since time immemorial. Humans were highly dependent on their animal counterparts for their successful survival and...
A Glaring Absence: The Need for Native Philosophy in Ontological Archaeologies (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Ontological Turn has become thoroughly entrenched in archaeological research, providing both new avenues of topical research as well as strong influences over the discipline as a whole. It has provided a needed shift to thinking outside the traditional archaeological box, taking many steps in the right direction. Yet, in the majority of cases,...
Going By Boat-Being: An Indigenous Ontological Approach to Human-Boat Relationships on the Pacific Northwest Coast (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Negotiating Watery Worlds: Impacts and Implications of the Use of Watercraft in Small-Scale Societies" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Canoes were central to watercraft cultures in subsistence activities, in hauling people and loads, in travel and recreation, and in warfare and ceremonies. However, to many people on the Pacific Northwest Coast, canoes were viewed, understood, and experienced as much more than just...
Graffiti Atmospheres and the Durability of Transient Places (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Rethinking Persistent Places: Relationships, Atmospheres, and Affects" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Although simple tags are liable to appear anywhere, contemporary graffiti thrives in places that are marginal to everyday traffic, such as alleyways, rooftops, overpasses and vacant or abandoned structures. Even in these places graffiti is usually impermanent; other writers will eventually go over it or the wall will...
Horse Mandibles in the Paleolithic as Liminal Bodies (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Embodied Essence: Anthropological, Historical, and Archaeological Perspectives on the Use of Body Parts and Bodily Substances in Religious Beliefs and Practices" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The deep bond between humans and horses is well reflected in the Paleolithic record from its earliest stages. The significant role of horses (Equus) in Paleolithic diet is evident from the presence of horse skeletal remains, and...
How Houses Become Haunted: Folklore Traditions as Archaeological Context (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Magic, Spirits, Shamanism, and Trance" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Anthropology and archaeology strive not only to reconstruct the physical characteristics of the past world but to understand how past people thought about the world around them. The way people think gets encoded in magical frameworks in both physical objects like monuments and dwellings, as well as in less permanent expressions, like music,...
Human-Shark Interactions in the Interior of North America: A Relational and Historical Perspective (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Past Human-Shark Interactions" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In a previous article, Betts et al. (2012) explored the spiritual relationship between sharks and humans in the Atlantic Northeast. For peoples with relational ontologies, using, wearing, and trading shark teeth not only signaled a sacred relationship with the shark but also an identity embodied by this conspecific; namely, a way of life connected to the...
Management and Memory Work: How Site Management Practices Affect the (Re-)Presentation of Archaeological Landscapes in Western New York (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Living Landscapes: Disaster, Memory, and Change in Dynamic Environments " session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeological landscapes embody shifting conceptualizations of the individuals who live, work, and play at those locations, both in the past and present. While other papers in this session address such changes in the context of the archaeological past, we bring the discussion to the present. We explore these...
The Mexica Tzompantli ("Skull Rack") as Life-Energy Battery Pack (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Embodied Essence: Anthropological, Historical, and Archaeological Perspectives on the Use of Body Parts and Bodily Substances in Religious Beliefs and Practices" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Mexica tzompantli (“skull rack”) consisted of multiple, agricultural-style ordered rows of human skull-seeds. As such it constituted an enormous “battery pack,” or milpa, that contained, stored, and radiated the...