Political economy (Other Keyword)
76-100 (140 Records)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the Lake Titicaca basin of southern Peru, agronomic systems were finely tuned over millennia to the high-altitude environment, an ever-oscillating climate, and dynamic cultural regimes. To succeed in these conditions, prehistoric farmers transformed steep hillsides into viable agricultural land by modifying them into massive agricultural terrace complexes....
Marginal Lives and Fractured Families. The Hidden Archaeology of Household Debt and Instability in Medieval Iceland (2018)
Archaeologists generally assume that the absence of market exchange implies an absence of financial debt as a mechanism of exchange and social control found in more "advanced" economies. This implicit logic is reproduced in contexts where identifying market exchange largely relies on tracking the circulation of specialized and imported goods, as is the case in medieval Iceland: a society largely made up of subsistence tenant farmers where archaeological indicators of market exchange virtually...
The Maya Economy: Dual? Integrated? Embedded? Or All of the Above? (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Ancient Maya Embedded Economies" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this paper we argue that the complexity of Maya economic structures and the debates that ensue over their interpretation stem from the fact that manifestations of those economic structures vary so greatly across time and space in the precolumbian Maya world. Maya economies were both dichotomized along elite and commoner lines, while also integrated in...
Metal Trade and Interregional Dynamics of the Mesoamerican Late Postclassic Period (2015)
The way people were placed in relation to each other was fundamental to the distinctive character of Mesoamerica, as a historically linked series of socially stratified, economically differentiated, complex societies. Long-distance exchange, one of the practices through which intensive interaction between different peoples was fostered, was centrally concerned with obtaining materials used for marking distinctions between commoners and nobles. Costume was a major means of marking distinctions...
Middle Preclassic Greenstone Caches from Paso del Macho, Yucatan (2018)
Complex ritual deposits dating to the Middle Preclassic period are rarely encountered in Yucatan, and typically have only been recovered from disturbed contexts. Excavations along the center axes in the plaza of the Middle Preclassic village of Paso del Macho in the Puuc region of Yucatan have yielded a series of offerings spanning from the early Middle Preclassic to the cusp of the Late Preclassic. Three different floor sequences were each associated with several offerings. The forms of the...
Minding the Gaps: Exploring the intersection of political economies, colonial ideologies, and cultural practices in early modern Ireland. (2016)
Examinations of the imposition of colonial ideologies actualised through the mechanism of plantation, or enforced settlement, in Ireland often highlight plantation as a stark process that was founded upon, and thus fully accommodated to, a fully-fledged version of mercantile capitalism. Yet on the ground, engagements between peoples reveal that ideologies were incompletely applied, plantation plans seldom realised, and new economic formulations incompletely rendered. On close examination,...
Nahua Diaspora and Cacao (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Postclassic Mesoamerica: The View from the Southern Frontier" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A significant amount of archaeological evidence demonstrates that Late Postclassic Mesoamericans exchanged cacao intensively and over long distances. A reason for high-volume cacao commerce in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries was the expansion of its use from a ritual offering and the ingredient in socially important...
Nahua Merchants in a Tarascan World (2015)
A major enemy of the Aztecs during the Late Postclassic Period, the Tarascan State nevertheless exchanged key commodities within the Mesoamerican world by means of markets, local and long-distance traders, and gift exchange. Sixteenth century documents known since the 19th c have indicated that Nahua merchants exchanged goods with Purepecha merchants at major Tarascan fortified frontier settlements such as Taximaroa. However new research on recently translated documents and new archaeological...
Neither Contact nor Colonial: Seneca Iroquois Local Political Economies, 1675-1754 (2016)
Fine-grained attention to the material conditions of indigenous daily lives over time reveals myriad changes completely incapable of being explained by models such as "traditional sameness" or "acculturative change." Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) sites were occupied for only 15-40 years before planned abandonment, so examining a sequence of these sites provides an excellent way to look at change over time. This paper examines local dynamics at three Seneca sites, illustrating strategic Seneca...
A New Method for Monitoring Socio-Economic Changes through Settlement Placement (2018)
There is a recursive relationship between socio-economic institutions and the environment. Decisions about where to place settlements in a landscape were informed by existing economic institutions, but placement of sites in turn effected how social and economic institutions were organized. In this paper, I present a new GIS-based method for quantifying socio-economic organization and change in prehistoric societies. Catchment analyses, as employed in this study, define the availability of...
Obsidian Exchange and Use in Early Formative Chalcatzingo (2018)
In the Middle Formative, Chalcatzingo was one of Highland Mexico’s dominant settlements. At its peak, Chalcatzingo had a well-developed obsidian blade technology and established lines of trade with the Gulf Coast. Chalcatzingo’s role in the exchange of obsidian in earlier periods is less well understood. This paper combines geochemical sourcing and technological analysis of an Early Formative obsidian assemblage from Chalcatzingo in order to elucidate this role. Geochemical sourcing enables a...
Obsidian Production and Consumption Practices at Matacanela (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Olmec Manifestations and Ongoing Societal Transformations in the Tuxtlas Uplands: A View from Matacanela" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Matacanela’s chipped stone assemblage overwhelmingly is dominated by nonlocal obsidian, including both products and by-products of multiple reductive technologies. Overarching temporal trends and classification of Matacanela’s obsidian assemblage have previously been discussed within...
Over the Andes, and Through their Goods: Integration Period Relations in Northern Ecuador (2018)
While highland Peru’s Late Intermediate Period (AD 1000-1400) is characterized by community isolation, regional violence and shrinking exchange networks, the contemporary northern Ecuadorian Late Integration Period was a time of large-scale interregional activity that saw the flourishing of market economies. The northern Ecuadorian Andes demonstrated highly diverse cultural practices amongst an intimately connected Barbacoan world that stretched from between the highlands of northern Ecuador and...
Political Change and the Social Power of Potters at Idalion, Cyprus during the First Millennium BCE (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Mediterranean Archaeology: Connections, Interactions, Objects, and Theory" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. On Iron Age Cyprus, the polities are described as "city-kingdoms" that are autonomous, independent, and led by kings. Idalion is one such polity located in the south central region of Cyprus. Using petrographic analysis, I investigated the way craft production was impacted by economic, social, and political power...
Political Economy at a Casma Valley Middle Horizon Center: Evidence from Pan de Azúcar de Nivín, Peru (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Since 2017 the Proyecto de Investigación Arqueológico Nivín seeks to clarify the cultural affiliation of the groups that occupied the middle Casma Valley, Peru. Architectural and ceramic features demonstrate the influence of both Wari and Casma cultural traditions at Pan de Azúcar de Nivín (PAN), a site occupied AD 950-1150. While the Wari Empire expanded from...
The Political Economy of Qalas and Canals in Greater Khorasan (2016)
Neo-evolutionary models for the emergence of early complex polities propose a causal relationship between political centralization and the development of large-scale irrigation networks. Decades of field research and historical analysis have made available a large dataset of settlement patterns and irrigation networks in lowland Central Asia, but information regarding settlement and agriculture in the highlands of Central Asia during this time is less well understood. The relationship between...
Political Economy, Praxis, and Aesthetics: The Institutions of Slavery and Hacienda at the Jesuit Vineyards of Nasca, Peru (2016)
At the time of its expulsion from the Spanish Empire in 1767, the Society of Jesus was among the largest slaveholders in the Americas. The two Jesuit Nasca estates (San Joseph and San Xavier) were their largest and most profitable Peruvian vineyards, worked by nearly 600 slaves of sub-Saharan origin. Their haciendas and annex properties throughout the Nasca valleys established agroindustrial hegemony in the region. This paper explores the political and economic dynamics among enslaved subjects...
Politics along the Rivers: An Example from the Gulf of Fonseca, Honduras (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Reconstructing the Political Organization of Pre-Columbian Nicaragua" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The relationship between environment, politics, and economies has often been observed in the archaeological record. In the Gulf of Fonseca, where archaeological sites concentrate around mangrove swamps, rivers and estuaries; politics were intricately tied to the affordances of riverine systems. Based on the ceramic...
The Politics of Commerce: Aztec Pottery Production and Exchange in the Basin of Mexico, A.D. 1200-1650 (2006)
The relationships between market and political institutions have varied in different times and places, but no market system was (or is) devoid of political involvement. The contrasting approaches of the Aztec empire and Spanish colonial regime to the Basin of Mexico market system are instructive about the ways that commercial agents (producers, traders) respond to “top-down” pressures from state elites to steer and direct the commercial economy to their political advantage. The results of this...
Post-Chavín Political Developments in Ancash: Comparative Perspectives from the Nepeña and Pallasca Regions (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Peering into the Night: Transition, Sociopolitical Organization, and Economic Dynamics after the Dusk of Chavín in the North Central Andes" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this paper, we present preliminary results of our 2019 excavations at the centers of Cerro San Isidro (Nepeña) and Pashash (Pallasca) in the Moro and Cabana regions of north-central Peru, respectively. Both are multicomponent hilltop sites that...
Pottery Production at Idalion, Cyprus: Investigating First Millennium BCE Politics and Culture through Ceramic Petrography. (2018)
On the island of Cyprus, the first millennium BCE was a period of change in politics and culture brought about by new people, new governance, and new technology. This paper attempts to analyze these changes using one site. Idalion is located in the east-central part of the island. The polity went through many changes from its founding, c. 1200 BCE, through the first millennium BCE and I have begun to investigate some through petrographic analysis of pottery. Pottery production can represent...
Power before Paquimé? Hypotheses on Political Economies in Casas Grandes. (2015)
In this paper, I outline alternative hypotheses on the nature of the late-Viejo and early-Medio Period political economies in the Casas Grandes Regional System from what is now Chihuahua, Mexico. Recent research has described in impressive detail the productive base and the ideology that may have emerged at Paquimé during its late-Medio Period (AD 1350-1450) florescence. However, little is known about power in the Casas Grandes region either prior to Paquimé’s brief 14th Century expansion into...
Power Cooking...Or Not (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Hot Rocks in Hot Places: Investigating the 10,000-Year Record of Plant Baking across the US-Mexico Borderlands" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Paquimé-centered tradition is one of the most influential communities in northwestern Chihuahua and U.S. Southwest (NW/SW). We have argued that food production and preparation was central to this polity. Some of best evidence of this are earthen ovens, one of which is...
A Preliminary Investigation into the Political Economy of Santa Cruz, an Associated Community with Ichmul de Morley, Yucatan, Mexico (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper centers on the analysis of shell, lithics, and ceramics recovered from the ancient Maya community of Santa Cruz, located 3 km south of the secondary site of Ichmul de Morley in northern Yucatán. Ichmul de Morley appears to have had an expansive growth during the Late and Terminal Classic periods that might have encouraged local development of nearby...
A Preliminary Study on Food and the Emergence of Archaic States in the Hawaiian Islands (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeologists approach the topic of ancient foodways in two major ways: by focusing on ‘diet’ and adaptation to local environments, or more recently, by focusing on ‘cuisine,’ through culturally specific rules about how food is acquired, prepared, consumed, and discarded. Few, however, have attempted to consider how changes in diet and cuisine have...