Social Complexity (Other Keyword)
26-50 (51 Records)
Fieldwork from the 1993 season at La Quemada
Initial Period Irrigation-based Societies in the Viru Valley, Peru (2016)
Radiocarbon dates from the sites of V-198 and Huaca El Gallo/La Gallina in the Viru Valley of Peru illustrate that the transition inland from the coast and the construction of monumental corporate architecture based on irrigation agriculture was not unique to the Supe Valle area along the Andean coastline. A second instance has been identified in Viru where it is also associated with the use of ceramics as early as 3950 years before present (2450 calibrated years B.C.). This pushes back the...
La Quemada-Malpaso Valley Archaeological Project (LQ-MVAP)
For over 15 years, Mexican and American archaeologists and students have dug ancient ruins, walked the high desert landscape, and worked in laboratories to understand the rise and fall of La Quemada, Zacatecas. We want to know why societies become complex, developing social hierarchies with specialized economic, political, and religious roles for their members. Why do civilizations expand? Northern Mexico's ancient past is an ideal context for studying these questions. During the period A.D....
Malpaso Database (2008)
no description provided
The Origins of Social Complexity in Chalcolithic Northern Mesopotamia: Excavations at Surezha (2016)
Although much scholarship has focused on the emergence of towns and cities in southern Mesopotamia, archaeologists still know very little about comparable developments in northern Mesopotamia and especially Iraqi Kurdistan, due to the rarity of archaeological fieldwork in those regions until recently. The excavation project based at Surezha on the Erbil plain aims to contribute to our understanding of Chalcolithic northern Mesopotamia and illuminate the development of social complexity in the...
Paths towards Complexity in the Maya Lowlands: Implications of Architectural Change at Cahal Pech (2016)
The elucidation of how permanent settlements and social complexity evolved in the Maya lowlands has been a long-standing question among Mayanists. Recently, it has been proposed that the first permanent architecture in the Pasion River region (i.e., Ceibal) emerged as ritual complexes around 1000 B.C. rather than villages with permanent households (i.e., Inomata and colleagues 2013). Nevertheless, Middle Preclassic evidence from the Belize Valley (i.e., Cahal Pech) has depicted a different...
Physiological stress, activity patterns and the emergence of social complexity in early China (2017)
Because of a lack of artifacts or archaeological features which can indicate social status, the Early and Middle Neolithic periods ca.7000-4000 BC in China are considered to be relatively egalitarian periods. Differences within and among settlements became pronounced in the third millennium BC. The adaptation of agricultural lifeways might be a cause of social complexity. However, it requires further investigation into how and why this happened. In the case when there are not enough artifacts to...
Prehistory (1989)
This resource is a citation record only, the Center for Digital Antiquity does not have a copy of this document. The information in this record has been migrated into tDAR from the National Archaeological Database Reports Module (NADB-R) and updated. Most NADB-R records consist of a document citation and other metadata but do not have the documents themselves uploaded. If you have a digital copy of the document and would like to have it curated in tDAR, please contact us at comments@tdar.org.
Preliminary Report of SUNY-Buffalo Investigations at La Quemada, Zacatecas, 1987 and 1988 Seasons (1989)
Fieldwork from the 1987 and 1988 seasons at La Quemada
Preliminary Results from "the Role of Religious Institutions in Pre-Columbian America Data Analysis Project" (2016)
The past couple of decades have seen a marked rise in behavioral and social science research from evolutionary psychologists, sociologists, and anthropologists looking to clarify what motivated the development and spread of religious institution throughout the world. These approaches tend to highlight the functional “prosocial” role that religion played in social development, citing its character as an integrative social device, as mitigator of external social stress, or as an enforcer of more...
Prestige economy and leadership in southwestern Colombia (400 BC-800 AD) (2015)
The capacity of the leaders in the Intermediate Area of the Americas to amass power before 1000 AD has been usually explained as a result of the manipulation of a religious ideology or through the creation of social debts in the context of feasting. My dissertation research in the Malagana site, in southwestern Colombia, has provided evidence indicating that these were not the only factors involved in the development of social inequalities in the region. I discuss the importance of prestige...
Project Bibliography (2008)
no description provided
Rethinking Local Differences in Burial Customs in the Final Jomon Period (2017)
Previous studies have discussed burial customs and society of the Kamegaoka culture in the final Jomon period (around 3200 to 2500 cal BP) as a single unit of similar local societies in the northern Tohoku district, extending around 220 km from north to south and around 180 km from east to west. In contrast, geographical clustering with delaunay triangulation, my new spatial analysis using GIS, reveals local scale differences in burial customs in terms of shapes of burial pits, grave goods and...
The River Suchil Valley project, Zacatecas and Durango 10 years of its inception (2015)
This project pretends to understand the process of social complexity by studying the strategies of landscape use and prehispanic resource management throughout the first millennium AD in a territory occupied today by the municipalities of Sombrerete and Chalchihuites, in the state of Zacatecas and Suchil, in the state of Durango. In our presentation we are going to evaluate and define the results of our research on topics as bioarchaeology of the ancient inhabitants, hierarchy and complexity of...
Roosevelt Platform Mound Study
The Roosevelt Platform Mound Study (RPMS) was one of three mitigative data recovery studies that the Bureau of Reclamation funded to investigate the prehistory of the Tonto Basin in the vicinity of Theodore Roosevelt Dam. The series of investigations constituted Reclamation's program for complying with historic preservation legislation as it applied to the raising and modification of Theodore Roosevelt Dam. Reclamation contracted with the Arizona State University Office of Cultural Resource...
Shaping Space: Built Space, Landscape, and Cosmology in Four Regions (2010)
In this article, the authors seek to understand cosmological expressions in architecture and the built landscape in Mesoamerica, Northern Mexico, the US Southwest, and the US Southeast.
Shell Bead Production at Cahokia (2016)
Cahokia (c. 1050-1400AD) was the largest pre-Columbian city in North America and had far-reaching influence across the Mississippian world. Initially considered a chiefdom, recent reappraisals have cast doubt on the applicability of traditional social evolutionary models to Cahokia, suggesting it is best understood on its own terms as a historical phenomenon. One significant facet of the Cahokian prestige goods economy involved the production, distribution, and circulation of large numbers of...
Shimao: the Prehistoric Pioneer of Rising States in Northern China (2017)
In ancient China, a number of ethnic groups and polities rose and declined in northern China. The competition and wars between these frontier polities and Central-Plain dynasties occurred frequently in Chinese history. A series of new archaeological discoveries in recent years have revealed that Shimao was the first state-level society emerging in northern China. The Shimao social group was mainly distributed in the Ordos region, where the social complexity experienced a leaping development in...
Social complexity and wealth inequality in middle-range society: A complex systems and network science approach to the Prehistoric Bronze Age on Cyprus (2017)
Economic and social leaders create and maintain unequal or dominance relationships within and between communities by controlling labor, and limiting access to technological, material and ideological resources, and trade networks. Through these kinds of actions and interactions, social networks are structured and restructured altering the flow of goods, services and information. From this bottom-up process, social complexity emerges. To understand how the structure of underlying social networks...
Spondylus, Mounds and Pyramids: An Approach to Social Changes in the Northern Andes of Ecuador during the Late Period (2017)
During the Pre-Columbian period, the northern Andes hosted an intense cultural interaction that led to the emergence of chiefdoms with diverse forms of political administration, power strategies, and economic integration. For the northern Andes of Ecuador, the archaeological research typically assumes a gradual development of the Cara people during the Late Period between 600 and 1525 AD. New archaeological evidence of social and natural events suggests a transitional stage between 900 and 1200...
A tale of two towns: Demographic and economic change in two middle Yangzi communities (2015)
The late Neolithic marked the emergence of a new kind of settlement pattern in the middle Yangzi river valley. During this period, large, tightly nucleated communities, many of which were surrounded by moats or walls, rapidly replaced the dispersed hamlets and small villages of the middle Neolithic. This dramatic transition in settlement organization may have been associated with significant changes in social and economic relations between individuals both within and between settlements. To...
Temporal and Spatial Variability in Pre-Aksumite Lithics from Mezber, NE. Ethiopia: Social and Economic Implications (2017)
With over 33,000 total excavated flaked stone artifacts and >18,000 analyzed from deposits in primary context, Mezber offers a unique opportunity to understand the role of lithics in Pre-Askumite societies. Using multiple raw materials and reduction sequences, knappers produced a wide array of LSA/Neolithic tools for domestic use, and a narrower range for specialized activities. Locally available chert was the most common raw material, although pXRF results indicate ≥3 as yet unknown distant...
Trabajos conducidos por la State University of New York dentro del Proyecto La Quemada 1989-90 (1992)
Fieldwork from the 1989-90 seasons at La Quemada
Unexpected Social Complexity in the mid-Zaña Valley, North Coast, Peru (2016)
Based on recent fieldworks, this paper argues for a major rethinking of the Gallinazo-Mochica relationship. Investigations in the mid-Zaña Valley have revealed unexpected architectural and social complexity at the site of Songoy-Cojal. The predominantly residential Cojal shows an abundant co-presence of stylistically Gallinazo and Mochica remains. In addition to fineline decorated ceramics perhaps from farther south, there is a strong Gallinazo-like presence, which may be characteristic of in...
The "Visible" Dead: Mortuary Patterns and Ceremonial Activities in the Dawn of the Bronze Age in Southern Greece (2017)
Following anthropological theory regarding the dynamic relationship between the living and the dead, this paper will explore the role of mortuary and ceremonial places as important venues for human activities related to broader social phenomena and cultural changes. By the mid. 3d mil. BCE southern Greece had witnessed the emergence of social stratification evident both in the settlement and mortuary archaeological record. Little is known, however, regarding the preceding period and the...