Power (Other Keyword)
26-37 (37 Records)
Little is known about how Late Postclassic populations in southeast Mesoamerica organized their political relations. Networks of Power fills gaps in the knowledge of this little-studied area, reconstructing the course of political history in the Naco Valley from the fourteenth through early sixteenth centuries. Describing the material and behavioral patterns pertaining to the Late Postclassic period using components of three settlements in the Naco Valley of northwestern Honduras, the book...
Politicized Use of the Spaces outside of Caves during the Terminal Classic Maya Collapse (2017)
This paper investigates the use of caves as performance spaces for water and agriculturally focused rituals during the Maya Late Classic period (~ A.D. 750-900) and the events of the 'collapse'. Although the ‘collapse’ of the social, economic, and political systems during this period has been the subject of much study, the majority of research has focused on the environmental factors with little consensus as to how rulers attempted to maintain order, social solidarity, and political power...
Power and Polity in the Motul de San José Zone: Recent Research at Kantet’u’ul and Chachaklu’um (2016)
Motul de San José dominated a swath of the northern shore of Lake Peten Itza in central Peten, Guatemala, during the Late Classic. Recent excavations at two small sites in the periphery of Motul de San José, Kante’t’u’ul (approx. 3km northwest) and Chachacklu’um (approx. 5km east) investigated the relations between these secondary centers and their political overlords at Motul de San José. The divergent cultural histories, settlement patterns, architecture, and material culture of these two...
Religious Subjects and Gendered Transformations at the Native American City of Cahokia (2015)
Though processes of subjectification are continuously ongoing, there are moments when powers coalesce in particular persons, places, or objects and bring about pervasive transformations. We explore these moments through gendered divisions of key religious spaces, objects, and practices at the Native American city of Cahokia and other early Mississippian places. Through cosmological oppositions, these spaces, objects and practices both created balance and fomented politico-religious...
Reversals of Fortune: Understanding Shifts in Political Power from Above and Below (2017)
Current social theories from a variety of disciplines offer ways through which we may understand when and why citizens of a polity or subjects a ruler are likely to protest or rise in response to problems in the relationship between governments and those they govern. Some forms of asymmetry and inequality serve as good general predictors of when protest, rebellion, or civil war are most likely to occur, while the ways in which these issues are framed and resolved vary from society to society. ...
The Role of Time in Plantation Management at Thomas Jefferson’s Poplar Forest (2017)
In the early decades of the nineteenth century, Southern plantation owners sought to incorporate time consciousness into their production methods in a bid to enter the emerging industrial capitalist economy of the United States. However, mechanical time, regulated by the clock instead of nature, was at odds not only with the natural cycles of the sun, but also with the very institution running the plantation economy: slavery. History documents that plantation managers attempted to use clocks,...
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...
"She Dressed in Strictly Native Style": The Materiality of Power and Identity in the 19th Transatlantic Slave Trade (2023)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Materialities of (Un)Freedom: Examining the Material Consequences of Inequality within Historical Archaeology", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Early 19th century legislation by European and American powers banning the forced exportation of enslaved Africans from the continent did not bring about an end to the transatlantic slave trade. Rather, it prompted traders to explore more secluded establishments and...
Storage And Empire: Choreographies of Time and Matter at Rome’s Harbours (2018)
The capacity for storing surplus has been a key parameter in the hierarchical rankings of socio-political evolution, with empire at the apex. With its large-scale ports and massive warehouses, the Roman empire easily fits this bill. Models of socio-political evolution, however, not only build on top-down templates of power, but also adopt a view of things (i.e. stored goods) as passive resources. But in the light of recent material culture theory, storage becomes a more complex mediation of time...
The Storm God, Feathered Serpents, and Possible Rulers at Teotihuacan (2007)
In this paper, George Cowgill focuses on how Mesoamericans used worldviews and ideologies in sociopolitical ways. More specifically, Cowgill argues that specific sociopolitical ideologies arise when there is a shared worldview.
Theorizing Infrastructure (2015)
Accounts of ancient infrastructure are very common. Almost every archaeologist who deals with complex polities regularly encounters infrastructure in some form - including roads, irrigation canals, bridges, harbors, aqueducts, recording systems and forts - just to name a few of the most common varieties. That said, the concept is rarely explicitly theorized or defined within the discipline - and is usually identified on the basis of "we know it when we see it". In contrast, this paper seeks to...
VIVIR Y MORIR EN TIBANICA, REFLEXIONES SOBRE EL PODER Y EL ESPACIO EN UNA ALDEA MUISCA TARDÍA DE LA SABANA DE BOGOTÁ (2016)
This paper studies the relation between feasts and other issues that are traditionally related the power of Muisca chiefs in their communities. The research question deals with the linkage between different dimensions of the social stratification in the La the Muisca site of Tibanica, including: feasting itself, health, kinship and nutrition. It is argued that there is no lineal relation between such variables, and that Muisca social organization is best understood from a multidimensional and...