Central America and Northern South America (Other Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elizabeth Dresser-Kluchman.

This is an abstract from the "Ancient Forest Management and Landscape Transformation: Anthropological Perspectives from the Americas" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The most iconic of the Southwest United States’ landscapes are not its forests. Rather, deserts, scrubland, and floodplains cover a significant physical and intellectual footprint. Especially in the north of the region, however, Pinyon-Juniper woodlands and Ponderosa forests make up a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stephanie Meyers.

This is an abstract from the "Ancient Forest Management and Landscape Transformation: Anthropological Perspectives from the Americas" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Strategic forest management was imperative for the survival of inhabitants of the ancient Maya city of Calakmul. How were the inhabitants of this great polity able to support a sizable population for over 1600 years in a challenging environment? Environmental DNA (eDNA), pollen and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Billie Follensbee.

This is an abstract from the "Hidden Gems: New Research on Lapidary, Lapidarists, and Polished Stone and Shell in the Americas" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A plethora of recent investigations have explored the identification, composition, manufacture, purposes, and meanings of Mesoamerican mirrors. These studies purport that the earliest mirrors were made of mica, dating as early as 1650 BCE, followed in the Early Formative period by mirrors...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christopher Wolff.

This is an abstract from the "Toolstone and Mineral Geography Across Time and Space" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Maritime Archaic people of Newfoundland were a coastal culture whose primary economic activity was focused on sea mammals, fish, and seabirds in nearshore environments and offshore islands. It is assumed that they had seaworthy watercraft that allowed them to travel efficiently along the coast and to smaller islands in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rosemary Joyce.

This is an abstract from the "Exercising Freedoms: Historical Archaeology of the African Diaspora in Latin America" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. For much of its history, the archaeology of Latin America has been framed as concerned primarily with the period before European colonization. Even as archaeological research on the colonial period expanded, a focus on a dichotomy of indigenous peoples and colonizers continued, an expression of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Takashi Sakaguchi.

This is an abstract from the "Toolstone and Mineral Geography Across Time and Space" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The goal of this paper is to better understand variability in raw materials of stone ornaments recovered from burials at the Kashiwagi-B site, which cosists of shuteibo (a type of communal cemetery characterized by a circular embankment constructed in the latter half of the Late Jomon of central Hokkaido) and non-shuteibo burials....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Francisco Aceituno.

This is an abstract from the "Ancient Forest Management and Landscape Transformation: Anthropological Perspectives from the Americas" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent archaeological excavations in several rock shelters in the Serranía La Lindosa demonstrate that the Colombian Amazon was occupied at the end of the Ice Age at a time of climatic transition. The archaeological record indicates a sustained occupation since the arrival of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Waka Kuboyama.

This is an abstract from the "Hidden Gems: New Research on Lapidary, Lapidarists, and Polished Stone and Shell in the Americas" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Celtiform pendants from pre-Columbian Costa Rica (500 BCE – 900 CE) are characterised by skilfully decorated carvings on celtiform semi-precious rocks and minerals. A human or animal face is carved on the poll of an axe, while the bit is not decorated, leaving the edge of the axe clear....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrea Cuellar.

This is an abstract from the "Ancient Forest Management and Landscape Transformation: Anthropological Perspectives from the Americas" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. We present a trajectory of pre-Columbian forest resource management and socio-political change in the Quijos region, an upper Amazonian/eastern Andean setting in north Ecuador. We evaluate if and how forest resource use changed in association with changing social and population...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Matthieu Menager.

This is an abstract from the "Hidden Gems: New Research on Lapidary, Lapidarists, and Polished Stone and Shell in the Americas" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Between 500 BC and 700 AD, important quantities of iron ore mirrors and jade plaques, associated with the Maya elites and kings, were found in northwestern Costa Rica some 1000 km away from the Mayan area (BC 500 - AD 700). Since 2023, the MayaCosta Project brings together archaeologists,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Rafael McCormick Alcorta.

This is an abstract from the "Toolstone and Mineral Geography Across Time and Space" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Obsidian sourcing studies have a long history in Mesoamerica, but few have concentrated on the Pacific Slope of Guatemala. Here, I present the results of sourcing analyses of obsidian artifacts excavated from Late to Terminal Classic (650-950 CE) manufacturing contexts at Cotzumalhuapa and its hinterland in Guatemala. Chemical...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Roberto Rosado-Ramirez.

This is an abstract from the "Toolstone and Mineral Geography Across Time and Space" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This presentation will focus on limestone quarrying activities in the Classic Maya (600-1000 CE) city of Ake, in present-day Yucatan, Mexico. Although often characterized as an unskilled activity, limestone quarrying required training, skill, and a specialized tool kit. The skills and specialized knowledge of ancient Maya quarry...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stance Hurst.

This is an abstract from the "Toolstone and Mineral Geography Across Time and Space" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Geoheritage is an emerging field that examines geodiversity's scientific, cultural, and educational values. Ogallala Formation quartzarenite clasts, known as Potter member quartzite in archaeological literature, are well-indurated quartzose sandstones found abundantly in the basal gravels of the Ogallala Formation, with gravel...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Markus Reindel.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. While the political structures of Mesoamerica are characterized by verticality and stratification, societies in Southern Central America exhibit a more horizontal, less hierarchical organization. However, detailed settlement pattern studies in Southern Central America that would allow a thorough investigation of this phenomenon are still very scarce. The...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Katherine Sterner.

This is an abstract from the "Toolstone and Mineral Geography Across Time and Space" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Galena has been recovered from pre-contact archaeological sites throughout the Eastern Woodlands, principally in mortuary contexts. The presence of galena in these contexts, the general lack of cultural modification to galena specimens recovered from archaeological sites, and the often-long distances between galena deposits and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anne S. Dowd.

This is an abstract from the "Toolstone and Mineral Geography Across Time and Space" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. <html> Archaeologists excavated the Dudley House Pit Site (nos. 06070100100, 671NA222) on the Ochoco National Forest and Crooked River National Grassland in 1989 and 1990. At least 40 surface depressions were documented. Researchers identified organic materials yielding a radiocarbon date from a hearth in Depression #1...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alain Queffelec.

This is an abstract from the "Hidden Gems: New Research on Lapidary, Lapidarists, and Polished Stone and Shell in the Americas" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Lapidary production is a prominent aspect of the material culture during the Early and Middle Ceramic Age in the Caribbean islands (400 BCE – 700 AD). The variety of bead and pendant types, and raw materials, is specific to this period when compared to later eras. The origin of various...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lydie Dussol.

This is an abstract from the "Ancient Forest Management and Landscape Transformation: Anthropological Perspectives from the Americas" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. At the transition between the Maya highlands and lowlands, the city of Raxruha, neighbouring and contemporary to that of Cancuén, was occupied in the Late Classic before being suddenly abandoned around 800 CE. Even today, the region's numerous caves, closely associated with fertility,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ashley Whitten.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ethnohistoric accounts from conquistadors in Pacific Nicaragua detail both the prevalence of maize as a part of the general diet of Native peoples, as well as the stories of migration from the Mesoamerican Chorotega- and Nicarao-speaking peoples into the region. Archaeologists have since used these accounts to frame excavations and interpretations of...