Ritual (Other Keyword)
126-150 (263 Records)
The archaeological record of Hopewell cultures of the Eastern Woodlands demonstrates the ritual importance of birds in the form of effigy pipes, copper and mica cutouts, and mortuary vessels. Bird motifs continue to be prevalent beyond the Hopewell period in peninsular Florida, during Weeden Island times (A.D. 200-900), when representations of waterbirds, among other avian taxa, appear on pottery, often in the form of effigy vessels. Because of their ability to traverse worlds—air, land, and...
Functional Flesh: A Consideration of Bodily Loci in Classic Maya Bloodletting Practices (2016)
Bloodletting is generally accepted as a pan-mesoamerican practice, varying both in ideology and process. The Classic Maya drew blood from two specific areas: men most commonly let blood from their genitals while women more often let blood from their tongue or cheeks. Previous research into the choice of oral and genital perforation for nonpermanent piercing includes little investigated functional qualities, which may have been a key factor for locus choice. I argue that the functionality of...
The Heat of the Night: Ritual Purification and Curing in Mesoamerica (2017)
While daytime is often reserved for fairly mundane activities, most archaeological questions have focused on this time period. A wide variety of activities though cross the day into the nighttime, or occur only after dark. It is during the night when Mesoamericans recreated much of their mythology in ritualistic acts. This paper explores the use of household temazcales as nightly ritual spaces. These saunas were not only found in large communal spaces, but also in households. For what were the...
Highway U-95 Archeology: Comb Wash To Grand Flat, Volume II (1974)
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.
Hilltops and Libations: A New Pattern of Recuay Ritual Space and Practice in the Northern Callejon de Huaylas Valley, Peru (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeological studies of ancient hilltop constructions across Peru have revealed how ancient Andean people, often during the so-called “intermediate periods,” protected and defended their village spaces in times of interregional warfare and political balkanization. In the north-central highlands of Ancash, Peru, numerous studies have revealed that the...
Hohokam Archaeology along the Salt-Gila Aqueduct Central Arizona Project, Volume IX: Synthesis and Conclusions (1984)
This volume is the last in a series of nine reporting the work of the Salt-Gila Aqueduct, Central Arizona Project Archaeological Data Collection Studies and Supplemental Class 3 Survey Project (SGA). This study was funded by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (Contract No. 0-0732- V0101) to mitigate potential adverse impacts of Central Arizona Project construction on cultural resources in the aqueduct right-of-way. Data recovery was conducted at 45 Hohokam sites along a 93 km (58 mile) transect...
Home Bodies: An Examination of House Cremation among the Hohokam (2016)
During the pre-Classic era (ca. AD 400-1150), pithouses and houses-in-pits were the preferred modes of residential architecture among Hohokam communities. When excavated, these wood-framed domiciles often show signs of burning, which effectively closed the structures’ lifecycles as dwellings. Among affiliated and descendant communities such as the O’odham and some Yuman-speaking groups, a person’s death could prompt the burning of their home in order to combat any pollution, sickness, or...
Household Ritual and the Development of Complex Societies in Formative Mesoamerica: Comparing the Maya Lowlands and Central Mexico (2018)
Recognizing that households contribute to – rather than simply reflect – broad social changes, scholars working in the Maya lowlands and Central Mexico argue that domestic ritual played a role in the emergence of complex societies in Formative (or Preclassic) Mesoamerica (c. 1000 BC - AD 300). Certain aspects of household-level, ritualized activities are shared across Mesoamerican cultures. However, major differences within and between the two regions show that a variety of social organizations...
Household Shrines, Caches, and Burials: The Role of Ritual in Domestic Economy at Dos Hombres, Northwestern Belize (2015)
Household economies have been addressed from several perspectives in northwestern Belize. The resource specialized community model (Scarborough and Valdez 2003; 2009) emphasizes locally available resources in production and consumption at the community scale. The model has great validity in the hinterland communities and is clearly evidenced in household investigations near Dos Hombres Belize in the form of the raw materials utilized in stone tool production. In addition, the function of...
Households, Ritual, and the Origins of Social Complexity in the Maya Lowlands: A View From the Karinel Group, Ceibal, Guatemala (2016)
Payson Sheets’ work at Ceren has greatly influenced investigations of ancient Maya households at both Aguateca and Ceibal. Here we focus on recent excavations at the Karinel Group, a residential area at Ceibal. Due to its early foundation, Ceibal presents an opportunity to investigate multiple aspects of the origins of ancient Maya society. We discuss the development of the patio group, the typical Maya arrangement of stone house platforms around an open space, often rebuilt and reoccupied for...
Human Interment and Making Memory in Viking Age Iceland (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SANNA v2.2: Case Studies in the Social Archaeology of the North and North Atlantic" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Over 300 Viking Age (AD 871–1000) human interments are known from Iceland, many with accompanying dogs and horses. Though these interments are similar to those of elites in Scandinavia, inhumation burial in Iceland apparently served a different purpose — to demarcate boundaries in a landscape devoid of...
Hunter-Gatherer Mobility from the Early Archaic to the Late Prehistoric Period: Investigations at the Hogsback Site (48UT2516), a Housepit Site in Southwestern Wyoming (2007)
This paper makes use of an in-depth analysis of cultural remains at the Hogsback site (48UT2516), an Archaic housepit site in southwestern Wyoming (see Figure 1), to explore a set of issues relating to hunter-gatherer mobility in the Archaic era. This site, which was reoccupied successively and almost continuously over a period of at least 4,000 years, provides an ample data set against which to discuss such topics as changing settlement patterns and subsistence strategies. In this paper, it is...
Ideología y rituales de lluvia compartidos por los yungas del Período Cerámico Inicial (1,600 a.C.) y las poblaciones serranas del presente en la cuenca del Rímac, Costa Central del Perú. (2015)
Investigaciones en el sitio arqueológico La Explanada de Unión-Ñaña, ubicado a 772 msnm, en las laderas del cerro La Parra en Ñaña, margen norte del valle del Rímac. Permitieron vislumbrar inadvertidas modalidades de culto, en el extenso macizo que configura el cerro La Parra, santuario de montaña del Período Inicial (1,600 a.C.) en el valle medio del Rímac. Las excavaciones, revelaron rituales propiciatorios, que evocan los rituales en uso, en la vecina población altoandina de San Antonio de...
Illuminating the Path of Darkness: Transformative Aspects of Artificial Light in Dynastic Egypt (2016)
When discussing light in Ancient Egypt, the vast majority of scholarly attention is placed on the sun, a physical constant of the landscape and the primary source of illumination. The development of ideas on the significance of natural light in Ancient Egyptian culture is abundant, particularly in religious sources. Studies on artificial light, however, stand in stark contrast to the number of academic publications on natural light. This emphasis forms a uni-dimensional view of lighting in...
In the Footprints of Squier and Davis: Archeological Fieldwork in Ross County, Ohio (2009)
The papers in this volume were originally prepared for presentation at a symposium titled “In the Footprints of Squier and Davis: Hopewell Archaeology in Ross County, Ohio” at the 68th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology in Milwaukee, WI (April 11, 2003). Curiosity about the nature and contents of the mounds around Chillicothe, Ohio led Squier and Davis to conduct the first major archeological field study in North America. Field research is still the foundation of all...
Interlinking Practices and Community Assemblages: Agriculture and ritual in ancient Hualcayán, Peru (2018)
This paper combines assemblage theory with ritual economy in the study of long-term community formation at prehistoric Hualcayán, in highland Ancash, Peru. In particular, it explores how the people of Hualcayán interlinked and coordinated their practices of building, food production, and ritual consumption to assemble a Recuay community during the Andean Early Intermediate Period (AD 1–700). It traces the archaeological evidence of how religious ideologies, social group divisions, and...
Issues of Function and Scale as Viewed through Possible Ritual Structures at the Late Archaic Site of Huaricanga, Peru (2015)
Throughout the Late Archaic Period (3000-1800 B.C.) communities along the north-central coast of Peru witnessed a dramatic increase in the material manifestations of ritual performance. During this time, the earliest monumental ceremonial architecture in South America was constructed at over 30 sites between the Huaura and Fortaleza River valleys in a region known as the Norte Chico. While considerable archaeological research has been conducted on the large-scale platform mounds and sunken...
"Just the leftovers!" Pre-Christian ritual in highland Maya colonial documents (2015)
In this paper I will present an analysis of colonial texts in indigenous languages that describe or paraphrase pre-Hispanic ritual. I will present comparisons between the structure and poetics of such texts and those of contemporary Christian sacramental practice as attested in sixteenth and seventeenth century doctrines and catechisms. Based on the analysis of intertextuality, I will show that pre-Hispanic ritual genres became a template for the Spanish mendicant friars and their native...
Keeping it Natural: Ancient Maya Modifications of the Ritual Landscape Outside of Caves (2015)
From as early as 1000 B.C., the Maya considered caves to be sacred features of the landscape and used them as ritual spaces. Performances associated with caves served not only the ruling elite in reaffirming their right to rule, but the entire community’s confidence in their rulers. These performances became increasingly important in times of crisis, such as during the Late Classic Maya ‘collapse’ when a series of droughts aggravated the overcrowded, over-farmed, and deforested localities which...
La tradición de los incensarios en el centro de Chiapas (2015)
La utilización de incensarios cerámicos con el fin de quemar ofrendas durante las ceremonias, que podrían ser resinas aromáticas, papel, semillas, flores u otros elementos, constituyó una tradición milenaria en el centro de Chiapas, como lo han demostrado las evidencias arqueológicas. Las excavaciones realizadas en Chiapa de Corzo y otros sitios de la Depresión Central, como Mirador o Vistahermosa, aportan información de gran interés sobre los orígenes, formas de uso y desarrollo estilístico de...
Late Woodland Ritual Site in Northern Kentucky (1992)
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.
Levels of Hierarchy in Northern Mexico: The Color of Ritual at Paquimé, Chihuahua, Mexico (2015)
In societies across the ancient world, incipient leadership and centralization were founded on connections to the cosmological through ancestors, origins, and other ritual practices. At Paquimé in northern Chihuahua, Mexico these ritual practices were expressed through the language of color symbolism. Color/directional symbolism is a cosmological principle that acts as a deep structure for societies in the Puebloan U.S. Southwest and Mesoamerica. Red, black, yellow, white, and blue/green...
Life Among the Tombstones: Forensics Crosses Paths with Hoodoo (2016)
African magic rituals among the graves of the recently dead in the South and elsewhere may not be as rare as one might think. This paper is an exploration of a case wherein the author was called in as a forensic archaeologist and consultant to law enforcement investigating a case of cemetery desecrations with supernatural overtones. Further, during the course of this investigation, possible connections between the author's historical archaeological research excavation of a slave street on a...
A Lithic Analysis of Food Preparation and Resource Distribution in Recuay Ritual Feasting Contexts at Hualcayán (Ancash, Peru) (2015)
The preparation and consumption of food during feasting rituals is an ancient tradition in the Andes, occurring both on a small scale (participation of one family or kin group) and on a large scale (community-wide involvement). This poster presents a recent analysis of lithic tools from Hualcayán, an ancient Recuay community (1-600 AD) in highland Ancash, Peru. Excavations at Hualcayán yielded a variety of ground stone and expedient chipped stone tools and debris from a range of different...
Litter Burials from Spiro’s Great Mortuary Reconsidered (2016)
Artifact color has both chronological and symbolic significance at Spiroan burial sites in the Arkansas River drainage of eastern Oklahoma. In this paper, we examine litter burials from the Great Mortuary and the Brown mound at Spiro. Ethnohistoric descriptions are used to suggest color symbolism in Spiroan ritual displays. These data are compared with color usage in earlier burials at Spiro and mounds elsewhere in the drainage. We wish to determine whether the Great Mortuary was the culmination...