Urbanism (Other Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tomás Gallareta Cervera. Anna Novotny. Brett A. Houk.

This is an abstract from the "Ancient Maya Landscapes in Northwestern Belize, Part II" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Research on ancient Maya cities is generally focused on large paramount sites that had written records of the rulers’ activities. However, these large cities are the exception, rather than the norm, since the majority of the urban sites consist of smaller settlements. Research at the archaeological site of Chan Chich recovered...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gyles Iannone.

This is an abstract from the "The Current State of Archaeological Research across Southeast Asia" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The IRAW@Bagan project is aimed at generating an integrated socioecological history for residential patterning, agricultural practices, and water management at the Classical Burmese (Bama) capital of Bagan, Myanmar (eleventh to fourteenth centuries CE) across a range of significant ecological, climatic, economic,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Scott Macrae. Vo Thi Phuong Thuy. Ekaterina Menkina. Le Ngoc Han.

This is an abstract from the "The Current State of Archaeological Research across Southeast Asia" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Established in 968 CE the city of Hoa Lu was the first unified capital of the Dai Co Viet. This ancient capital is found in the UNESCO World Heritage Site of the Trang An Scenic Landscape Complex, Vietnam. It was constructed of two enclosures bounded by a series of embankment walls adjoining steep cliff faces created by...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Roland Fletcher.

This is an abstract from the "Ephemeral Aggregated Settlements: Fluidity, Failure or Resilience?" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. By convention urban settlements have been described as densely inhabited, permanently sedentary, and usually protected by barriers. While the latter might be conceded the other two were, until early in the 21st century, assumed to be definitive and fundamental to the functions of urbanism. The definition was a pillar of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ryan Collins.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper explores methodological opportunities for comparative settlement survey by applying ground-penetrating radar (GPR) as an augmentative remote sensing lens. In the last decade, remote sensing in Mesoamerica has undergone a renaissance through the application of Lidar to survey the landscape, providing immense quantities of data on new potential...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Felix Kupprat. Debra Walker. Verónica Vázquez López. Joshuah Lockett-Harris. Fernando Flores Esquivel.

This is an abstract from the "New and Emerging Perspectives on the Bajo el Laberinto Region of the Maya Lowlands, Part 2" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Calakmul is the largest site on the northern edge of the Bajo el Laberinto and has been investigated intensively since the 1980s. Previous research has produced valuable data regarding the general urban extent and the Late Preclassic monumental architecture surrounding the main plaza, as well as...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kayla Golay Lausanne.

This is an abstract from the "Ancient Mesoamerican and Andean Cities: Old Debates, New Perspectives" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper explores the formation, morphology, and neighborhood organization of two early urban settlements on the north coast of Peru – Grupo Gallinazo (~100 BCE–700 CE), Virú Valley, and Cerro San Isidro (~800 BCE–1500 CE), Nepeña Valley. Investigating variations in spatial arrangements and settlements at these two...

DOCUMENT Citation Only M. Kathryn Brown. Jason Yaeger.

The Mopan River valley of Belize is home to five closely spaced Lowland Maya ceremonial centers with extensive settlement occupying the landscape between. From south to north, the ceremonial centers are Arenal, Early Xunantunich, Classic Xunantunich, Actuncan, and Buenavista del Cayo. Archaeological evidence suggests that each of these centers was initially occupied by the Middle Preclassic, but they had distinct histories, evolving into ceremonial/political centers at different times, from...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gabriela Cervantes.

Cities which become capitals of large states provide unique information on the sociopolitical political organization and the nature of power, as they are home to a society’s leaders and central institutions. In the Andes, scholars have highlighted the existence of cities dominated by a centralized single governing institution, like the Moche capital of Pampa Grande; while others have drawn attention to the empty ceremonial centers, such as Cahuachi, main settlement of the Nazca society. A...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rachel Cohen.

Most archaeology takes as its primary unit of focus the archaeological site. Yet sites did not exist in isolation: interactions between sites, and between people and the surrounding landscape, were also an important component of ancient societies. These interactions were social, political, military, and/or ritual, and investigating the use of landscape provides archaeologists with a means to understand larger-scale processes such as growth and expansion of urban centers. One way of looking at...

DOCUMENT Citation Only H. S. Smith.

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.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gyles Iannone.

Although comparative studies have been criticized in recent years, especially within the more post-modern corners of anthropology, cross-cultural studies continue to have value for exploring the sometimes congruent, and at other times unique, manner that different communities choose to confront analogous socio-ecological issues. The Socio-Ecological Entanglement in Tropical Societies (SETS) project is a long-term endeavor aimed at promoting the cross-cultural, transdisciplinary examination of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only C. Scott Speal.

Cross-culturally and through time, anthropologists have found that--within hierarchical societies--elites tend to manage resources and allocate risk primarily to their own benefit. There is little reason to believe that Late Roman Imperial frontier elites would have behaved any differently. This paper examines the archaeological relationship between biological 'stress' or health--as inferred from skeletal remains--and socio-economic status / class--as evaluated on the basis of mortuary...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Carballo. Daniela Hernandez. Gabriel Vicencio. Edith Dominguez. Santino Rivero.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Life in Teotihuacan's urban neighborhoods revolved around the social infrastructure of local public spaces featuring temples, plazas, and other buildings with civic functions. Recent investigations in the Tlajinga district demonstrate that even on Teotihuacan's outer periphery these spaces could be quite elaborate, with structures elevated on talud-tablero...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stephen Whittington.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Chiyo Cahnu, a Mixtec mountaintop capital, is unusual in relation to the archaeology of Oaxaca because it is larger than normal for Postclassic settlements and apparently was inhabited for a short length of time. Mapping a one square kilometer area of the capital using powerful GPS devices between 2013 and 2017 revealed about 370 building sites, almost 2,400...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Shawn Morton. Meaghan Peuramaki-Brown.

In a 2012 article exploring the spatial structure of post-Tlamimilolpa phase Teotihuacan, Mexico, we invoked both a materialist body of method-theory known as space syntax and an interactional theory of community development. Through this framework, we discussed community structure and systems of authority expressed by the architectural masses and spaces of the city. In this paper, the authors revisit this approach, with fresh eyes and in the context of our growing knowledge of ancient urbanism....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kathleen Forste. Deirdre Fulton.

This is an abstract from the "Cultivating Cities: Perspectives from the New and Old Worlds on Wild Foods, Agriculture, and Urban Subsistence Economies" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The ancient city of Ashkelon was a major economic port in the Near East during the Early Islamic period (ca. 636–1200 CE). Located on the Mediterranean coast of modern-day Israel, it was a cosmopolitan city, an administrative center, and a stronghold in the coastal...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Søren Sindbæk.

This is an abstract from the "Ephemeral Aggregated Settlements: Fluidity, Failure or Resilience?" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Maritime trading emporia were nodal points of social networks and economic interactions in Viking-age Scandinavia. Despite their social centrality, archaeology shows that such places were rather small, unassuming, and sometimes short-lived settlement. This contrasts with a wealth of evidence pointing to communities...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Richard George. Douglas Kennett. Stanley Serafin. Marilyn Masson. John Krigbaum.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. We examine the process of migration using strontium isotope ratios from human enamel to shed light on the organization of the Mayapán polity during the formation (1200–1250 CE), apogee (1250–1400 CE), and decline (1400–1500 CE) of the city (N = 58). Our results support consistent local aggregation within the Chicxulub Basin and immigration from across the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dewei Shen.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Research on ancient city sites in Chinese archaeology tends to focus on remains within the city walls, while paying limited attention to the city periphery as a distinct and research-worthy spatial unit. The present paper challenges this prevailing approach by investigating the southern suburban area of the Chu capital in South China. It explores the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Veronica Perez Rodriguez.

This is an abstract from the "Advancing Public Perceptions of Sustainability through Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Researchers that study pre-Hispanic urbanism in the Mixteca Alta often remark that the region today is eroded and sparsely populated. Places that in the past supported urban populations in the tens of thousands today seem to struggle to sustain a few hundred. Some have called this the Mixtec paradox. Research on the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Max Price.

This is an abstract from the "Cultivating Cities: Perspectives from the New and Old Worlds on Wild Foods, Agriculture, and Urban Subsistence Economies" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Livestock are widely recognized as fundamental features of the political economies of ancient Near Eastern states. Animals served as “wealth on the hoof,” the strategic resources of urban institutions seeking to expand aspects of the subsistence economic to finance...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Benno Fiehring. Hans Martz de la Vega.

With only scarce information on the topic, we have undertaken an archaeoastronomical investigation in Tamtoc, because we consider that the relations between its architecture and phenomena in the sky constituted an important element for the harmonic integration of it’s urban space, which probably supported oral discourse in the past. The measurement of the building’s orientation in relation to the local horizon, allows us to know the specific calendric dates at which the sun aligns with the axis...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tomás Gallareta Cervera. Brett A. Houk.

Research on ancient Maya cities is generally modeled after large sites with massive architecture, dynastic burials, and written records documenting the activities of divine rulers. However, the development of these cities is the exception, rather than the norm, since the majority of Maya sites did not reach such enormous proportions, yet many of them likely qualified as cities from a functional standpoint. Hence, a research on non-massive cities, "from the bottom up," is crucial to understand...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jerald Ek.

This is an abstract from the "A Session in Memory of William J. Folan: Cities, Settlement, and Climate" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Over his distinguished career William Folan made a substantive contribution to knowledge of the scale, form, and nature of Maya urbanism. Classic Maya cities are often classified as a low-density agrarian-based urban tradition, a cross-cultural concept characterized by expansive settlement zones, lack of...