Empire (Other Keyword)
Empires
1-25 (29 Records)
Regime change is a social process that has occurred throughout human history and yet much is still unknown about how political developments shape local communities. This paper examines the impacts of the Late Postclassic (1350-1530 CE) Purépecha Empire on residents at Angamuco, an ancient city within the Lake Pátzcuaro Basin imperial heartland in Michoacán, Mexico. Imperial narratives in ethnohistoric texts emphasize that authorities controlled craft production, tribute, and social practices....
British Empire on the North American Frontier: Fort Miamis in the Ohio Territory, 1794-1796 (2023)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Colonial Forts in Comparative, Global, and Contemporary Perspective", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Fort Miamis, a British military outpost built in 1794 near present-day Toledo, Ohio, was an attempt to establish the British Empire and British identity in hotly contested territory. Poorly located and poorly constructed, the fort was never actually completed before it was turned over to U.S. forces in 1796....
Bureaucratic Reforms on the Frontier: Zooarchaeological and Historical Perspectives on the 1767 Jesuit Expulsion in the Pimeria Alta (2017)
The introduction of livestock to the Pimeria Alta (northern Sonora and southern Arizona), was one prong of Spanish imperial expansion into North America initiated largely by Jesuit missionization. Unlike other areas of North America, the missions in this region experienced an enormous bureaucratic transition following the expulsion of the Jesuits in 1767, and the subsequent arrival of Franciscan missionaries. Historians and historical anthropologists debate the social and economic impacts of...
Ceramic Emulation: Empires and Eminent Polities Seen from Afar (2015)
A systematic evaluation of emulation of powerful capitals using ceramic comparisons requires consideration of (1) degrees of similarity, (2) legacy traditions, and (3) depositional contexts and sample sizes. This analysis uses ceramics from the Mesoamerican Gulf lowlands on the west side of the Lower Papaloapan River to compare with ceramics from Teotihuacan during the Early Classic Period and from the Aztec Triple Alliance during the Late Postclassic Period. Replication, imitation, and...
Cerro Mejía: A Wari Community Divided? (2018)
The Wari-affiliated community on Cerro Mejía is divided by large walls that cut the slopes into vertical strips. These segments of the site may represent divisions of the settlement that the occupants recognized, agreed with, and maintained or these groupings may have been imposed by Wari officials. In this paper, I describe the features of Cerro Mejía and consider this important question. In light of overt differences between houses with regards to form and construction techniques I suggest...
Chimú Conquest and Administration at Talambo, Jequetepeque, Perú (2016)
There are few communities in the Andes untouched by the legacies of empire. On the North Coast of Peru, the Chimú (900—1470 AD) formed the most extensive empire in the region prior to Inca conquest. Significant archaeological and ethnohistoric evidence from the Jequetepeque Valley—the first region to be incorporated by the Chimú— has illustrated the nature of this conquest and the varying impacts on local communities. The site of Talambo, located in the lower neck of the Jequetepeque Valley, has...
Colonization as Imperial Strategy: the Wari Settlement of Moquegua, Peru (2016)
When Wari colonists arrived to Moquegua (ca. 600CE) there were several groups occupying different valley ecozones but a relatively small population. In order to establish the colony Wari officials invested a great deal of labor and resources in the upper drainage, which engaged local and colonial populations. In this paper I consider imperial expansion as a process, which was a multi-generational affair. I examine the construction of three major sites: Cerro Baúl, Cerro Mejía, and Cerro...
Community and the Contours of Empire: The Hacienda System in the Northern Highlands of Ecuador (2017)
Recent archaeological studies of Spanish colonialism have redirected scholarly attention both to the workings of imperialism and the multitude of ways in which marginalized populations navigated and remade the grids of power that constitute empire. A focus on the household and the materiality of everyday life has generated a rich body of evidence by which to tack between multiple scales of social life and foreground the material culture of daily life as constitutive elements in the making of...
Consumption Preferences at the Collapse of Empire: The Case of New Kingdom Jaffa (2017)
The site of Tel Yafo (modern Jaffa, Israel) provides unique insight into the tenure of the Egyptian New Kingdom empire in the Levant (ca. 16th - 11th centuries BCE). As attested to in both ancient documents and by the presence of Egyptian monumental architecture, Jaffa functioned as an important imperial center. As the empire waned, Jaffa persisted as one of the last Egyptian holdings in the region. Recent excavations by the Jaffa Cultural Heritage Project (JCHP) have opened this final period to...
Course of Empire (1952)
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.
Early Globalization of the Han Empire in Its Southern Frontier and the Expansion of Iron Economic Network (2018)
Even though the framework of early globalization has been proved as effective in illuminating ancient interregional interaction in many regions, its value and contribution to the archaeological study of ancient China has been overlooked in the literature. Focusing on the Han Empire, we employed statistical methods to exam variations in assemblages and frequencies of iron objects, one type of critical state finance in the Han political economies, from burials in the southern frontier of the...
"Eating locally" in Tlaxcallan: The Impacts of Political Economy on Postclassic Diets (2017)
Late Postclassic Central Mexico is defined by significant political change, with the Aztec Triple Alliance quickly dominating the political landscape. As the triple alliance materialized in the 15th century, Tlaxcallan simultaneously emerged as a key market center, connecting trade in the central highlands to the Gulf Coast. As the alliance expanded, Tlaxcallan remained a uniquely unconquered space, yet the conditions of its autonomy are unclear. Siege of trade routes and the manipulation of...
The Expression of Ideology in Levantine Submission Scenes: The Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III as Feasting in a Neo-Assyrian Context (2015)
Cultural appropriation of Levantine feasting forms by Neo-Assyria was an expression of agency that effectively subsumed, subverted and captured the dynamic of traditional Levantine polities. For those, the feast had represented an act of royal legitimation depicted iconographically by the figure of a king drinking from a cup. The rise of the Neo-Assyrian empire and the prominent appearance of this image, particularly in the 9th century BCE, deserves consideration as a probable co-opting of this...
Funerary Practice and Local Interaction on the Imperial frontier, 1st century AD: a case study in the Serur Valley, Azerbaijan. (2016)
Military campaigns and conflict defined the years leading to the 1st century AD in the South Caucasus. This mountainous frontier region acted as a buffer zone between the Roman and Parthian Empires competing for territorial expansion. Local alliances were cyclically forged, broken, and mended for territorial control. Yet, little archaeological evidence remains of these interactions. How are military campaigns being conducted in the eastern frontier? How are foreign forces interacting with local...
Fuzziness of Autonomy and Vassality: Materiality of History in OrileKesi during the Oyo Imperial Age, ca. 1640-1827 (2013)
To paraphrase, Akin Ogundiran has posed the question: How did the political contestations between the Oyo imperial power and the frontier communities affect the everyday life of the later, especially the villages and towns located in the frontier zones? An historical archaeological approach that melds oral traditions and ethnography with material culture is being utilized by a number of scholars, working independently at different sites in the Yoruba region (Nigeria), to find answers to this...
Going Where the Job Takes You: Itinerant Producers in the Eastern Roman Empire (2015)
Architectural relationships between the eastern Roman imperial capital at Constantinople and its provinces have traditionally been understood as derivative. In the province of Isauria on the southern coast of Anatolia, however, distinctive remains have led to the conceptualization of a group of native stonemasons known as ‘Isaurian builders,’ who traveled through provinces across Anatolia and northern Syria, leaving in their wake an identifiably Isaurian style of early Christian churches. At the...
Identity and Offerings in the Southern Peruvian Andes: A comparative study of the painted tablets and discs tradition of the Arequipa region, Southern Peru (2017)
Inka and Spanish imperial projects in the Andes frequently targeted local beliefs and ritual practices, albeit in dissimilar ways. Understanding the effects of imperial projects is not possible without a clear sense of the local ritual landscape and its (in)compatibility with state religions and other practices spread across state networks. The painted tablet and disc tradition of the Arequipa region in the Southern Peruvian Andes offers a particular case for studying local and regional rituals...
Imperial Impact: Population Dynamics and Political Landscapes of Inner Asia under the First Steppe Empire (2023)
This is an abstract from the "From the Altai to the Arctic: New Results and New Directions in the Archaeology of North and Inner Asia" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper integrates survey, mortuary, and genetic research into a multidisciplinary and multiscalar consideration of the impact that large political regimes like empires have on the social landscapes of individual communities and whole regions. In the case of the first steppe empire...
In the Orbit of Empires: Ceramics from Urartu to Rome (2016)
Imperial borderlands are drawn into the orbit of their powerful neighbors through a combination of economic interests, cultural affiliations, and martial threat. The site of Oğlanqala, Azerbaijan, has long been positioned at the periphery of empires, making it an excellent case study for dynamics of incorporation and resistance. This research uses ceramic petrography to compare patterns of ceramic production and exchange in the Middle Iron Age (MIA, 800-600 B.C.E.) to the Roman Period (100...
The Inca Incorporation of the Canete Valley, Part 1: Conquest or Incanization (2015)
Field research by the Canete Archaeological Project has begun to unveil rich data regarding the Inca incorporation of the Middle and Lower Canete Valley. Utilizing both systematic survey and excavations, our work suggests a complex and intensive interaction between the Inca and those who occupied the valley before them. In this paper, we begin to tease out the imperial strategies of incorporation and local responses to them. SAA 2015 abstracts made available in tDAR courtesy of the Society for...
Inka Frontier Political Economy: The Kallawayas and Yampara (2016)
In this paper I will evaluate the political economy of the ancient Inka imperial frontier in order to understand the ways in which competing border lords affiliated themselves to the empire, including associated processes of social competition, specialized production and changes in the indigenous local trajectories . In doing so, I will explore two Inka frontier segments. The first is located in the Yampara territory in the Southeastern region, and the second, in the central frontier in the...
Meaningful Choices: An Archaeology of Selective Engagement on the 19th Century Irish Coast (2016)
This research explores the nature of marginality on the periphery of the British Empire. The edges of empires are shifting, culturally-negotiated borders with the capacity to disclose important information about social networks and cultural change. Households in these places are subject to transnational processes and make choices which demonstrate the presence and connections with broader global networks of economic and social access. This project focuses on the ramifications of national...
Pots and Production: The Secret Agents of the Urartian Empire (2015)
In archaeological analyses of empire, certain aspects of material culture, such as specific architecture, metal work, and ceramic styles are often interpreted as diagnostic of imperial presence, the corporeal residue of political change. But these materials must be understood as agents of change working in concert with the people whose lives shift with the political reality. Elite ceramics are an essential component of the Urartian "State Assemblage," the material signature of the first empire...
Producing Pottery in a Province of the Hittite Empire (2015)
The Hittite Empire seized control of Cilicia, corresponding with the present-day states of Mersin and Adana in the Republic of Turkey, in the latter half of the second millennium BCE. While this region was under imperial rule, Hittite-style pottery became the most common ceramic type. Geochemical analysis of the pottery from Tarsus-Gözlükule, an urban center within Hittite Cilicia, indicates that the Hittite-style pottery was locally produced. At the same time, alternative ceramic types are...
Settled in Strange Lands: Forced Relocation as a Technology of the Inka Empire (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Seeing Migrant and Diaspora Communities Archaeologically: Beyond the Cultural Fixity/Fluidity Binary" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Why do empires force their subjects to leave home? From Neo-Assyria to the British West Indies, coercive migration policies have been adopted by expansive, multiethnic polities across time and space. One of the most ambitious projects of imperial forced relocation took place in the Inka...