Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Mathiowetz.

The rise of the Casas Grandes culture (AD 1200-1450) in Chihuahua, Mexico and the adoption of a new religion centered upon the Mesoamerican solar deity Xochipilli prefigured many of the social transformations that occurred among Pueblo cultures across the American Southwest by the fourteenth century. The appearance of new architecture of clear Mesoamerican derivation (e.g., I-shaped ballcourts) and imported finished objects of shell and copper in the Casas Grandes world indicates heightened...

DOCUMENT Citation Only José Carlos Beltrán Medina. Katrin Sieron. Juan Jorge Morales.

Al pié del volcán Ceboruco se encuentra el sitio prehispánico de Ahuacatlán con una amplia distribución en el paisaje, así como una larga secuencia cultural de más de mil años representada por materiales Capacha, Tumbas de Tiro y de la época Aztatlán, procedentes de su rico sementerio. Las excavaciones arqueológicas permitieron conocer el depósito estratigráfico del sitio, que muestra varias erupciones de baja intensidad y 2 eventos catastróficos que impactaron la región, una erupción pliniana...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elisa Villalpando.

Since the 1963 Sprague and Signori’s tabulation on copper bells, to Vargas 1995 or Wilcox et al. 2008, there is no question that copper bells in the Southwest/Northwest were trade items produced in West Mexico. Different kinds of exchange networks were responsible for the distributional patterns of the very "rare" items (copper bells and macaws) as opposed to those exhibited by the more common shell and turquoise. Few central communities exchanged copper bells and macaws; being macaws (Ara...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jose Luis Punzo. Lissandra Gonzalez.

Recent studies about metal work in the Proyecto Arqueologia y Paisaje del Area Centro Sur de Michoacan gave us the possibility of analyze a wide sample of copper bells from different collections and in museums along this western state in Mexico. In this paper we will present a comparative analysis between our database of Michoacan’s copper bells with the ones found in the USA southwest and specially in Paquime, Chihuahua, focusing on the Period 2 (AD 1200-1300 to Spanish invasion) like the most...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Danielle Phelps. Cristina Garcia-Moreno. James Watson.

Recent archaeological work at El Cementerio, a burial mound located in southeast Sonora, Mexico dated between AD 897 and 1635, has identified a local cultural tradition exhibiting selective influence from contemporaneous traditions in west Mexico. The vast majority of material culture reflects local manufacture and evolution, however, the presence of shell (from the Pacific Ocean) jewelry and the incorporation of biocultural practices of cranial deformation and dental modification suggest a link...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Guadalupe Sanchez Miranda. John Philip Carpenter.

Funerary traditions reflect social behaviors that contain important information about the integration of several social groups. Funerary practices seem to persist over time because they comprise an integral aspect of group identity. In this paper we discuss the funerary practices known for the identified late prehispanic Sinaloan archaeological traditions. Specific locations to bury the dead appear to be the usual practice for the Aztatlán and Huatabampo traditions. Funerary mounds with extended...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Daniel Leonard. Jennifer Chmilar.

It was nearly ten years ago when Dr. Scott Fedick unleashed his graduate students Daniel Leonard and Jennifer Chmilar into the Yalahau wetlands. Upon their return, Scott asked what questions each had about the wetlands, and two projects were born. During the ensuing field seasons, and time in between, Scott helped to solidify and expand on background knowledge, encourage interdisciplinary collaborations, and offer much needed support. In time, both Dan and Jen emerged from the wetlands able to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Darcy Wiewall.

Over the past several decades, Scott Fedick’s pedagogical approach to understanding local-scale environmental and biological diversity has inspired and influenced numerous students and colleagues perspectives on Maya household subsistence strategies. The first part of my presentation will discuss my participation in the Yalahau Regional Human Ecology Project and how Scott’s heterogeneous approach to resources management strategies influenced my later research on local subsistence strategies...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lucia Gudiel.

Dr. Scott Fedick’s research goals have always emphasized the importance of understanding the diversity and ingenuity of lowland Maya subsistence. Through his guidance and mentorship my dissertation focus was developed to explore the role of root-crops in ancient Maya subsistence. Recent paleoethnobotanical research has demonstrated that the ancient Maya diet included a wide array of plant foods.Currently lacking is enough evidence for the role of roots-crops.To begin to acquire an understanding...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anna Hoover.

Mentoring and strong teaching methods are the hallmarks of Scott Fedick's career. When just an undergraduate, Fedick took a chance on Anna Hoover and guided her into studying an ancient agricultural technique that is actually still practiced today. Chi'ich mounds, or small rock/pebble mounds, are utilized where surface soils are thin of temperatures are dry and arid. Serving as both mulch and root stabilizers for vines, shrubs and trees, these little features can be found n archaeological...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jennifer Mathews. Kathy Sorensen.

Scott Fedick co-founded the Yalahau Regional Human Ecology Project in 1993, and his cross disciplinary approach continues to influence both his colleagues and students. This paper provides an overview of how Fedick’s mentorship and scholarship shaped and guided the research of two former students at various sites in the Yalahau region, and how this research has led to a deeper understanding of the settlement patterns during the Preclassic/Classic transition and into the recent historic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Bethany Morrison.

Beyond his career as a professor and researcher, Dr. Scott Fedick has been a patient and dedicated teacher of archaeological field schools. In this capacity he leaves a legacy of changed lives. This paper looks back on the BRASS and Yalahau field schools and the lasting impression they left on participants. It also discusses field school pedagogy, looking at what has changed and what remains the same since the days of Scott´s famous death marches. SAA 2015 abstracts made available in tDAR...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Gust.

The Caste War left an indelible mark of the Yucatan Peninsula including helping to perpetuate abusive labor system that continued until the Mexican Revolution. This paper explores the living conditions at sugar productions facilities near the north coast of Quintana Roo, Mexico through comparison to a similarly-aged site in western Belize, San Pedro Siris. San Pedro Siris was a free village of primarily Maya families that were pushed south into Belize by refugees as the Caste War ended. ...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jeffrey Glover. Dominique Rissolo.

Glover and Rissolo owe a great deal to Scott Fedick for his mentorship through our graduate school years and for his friendship and council as we embarked on our own multidisciplinary project, the Proyecto Costa Escondida. This paper highlights the contributions Scott has made to interdisciplinary research in the Maya area. In so doing, we discuss how our project on the north coast of Quintana Roo builds on this intellectual heritage. We, like Scott, are investigating the dynamic interplay...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lance Wollwage.

Sediment cores from a cenote (sinkhole) at the center of T’isil, an archaeological site in the Yalahau region of Quintana Roo, Mexico, held a great abundance of well-preserved snail and clam shells in stratigraphic context. Many snail species are sensitive to water quality and depth, or otherwise inhabit specific environmental niches. Their shells are easy to identify and quantify, and where preserved may serve as sensitive paleoenvironmental proxies. At T’isil, variation in snail abundance...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Shanti Morell-Hart.

The legacy of Scott Fedick in ethnoecology, ethnoarchaeology, and landscape studies cannot be understated. Aside from years of active collaborative work and mentorship, the dissemination of his research has led to rich interpretations far beyond his immediate influence. In the first part of this paper, I follow impacts of Fedick's scholarship in several fields, as tracked through citations and students. I also trace his impacts on public policy and common understandings of Maya lifeways. In...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nicholas Hearth.

Scott's body of multidisciplinary and collaborative research resists categorization to a single rubric, even in ones as broad as historical ecology or cultural geography. However, many archaeologists I've met who haven't worked directly with him only understand his long-term research projects within these two paradigms. Few remember or realize that Scott began his graduate school career examining the lithic economy of the Tikal-Yaxha survey transect and that he has continued to facilitate and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christy Winstead. Amy Hoffman. Laura Ellyson. Steve Wolverton.

The archaeofaunal remains left by the Ancestral Puebloan people who lived in the Goodman Point community provide a chronological record of their interaction with turkey (Meleagris gallopavo). Domestication can be regarded as a co-evolutionary relationship between a plant or animal species and humans that varies in the intensity of mutual dependence. We examine how the Goodman Point residents’ relationship with turkey evolved from the late AD 900s to the 1280’s. Our research involves the analysis...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jonathan Till. Winston Hurst.

The valley of Bluff, Utah, is one of many localities in southeast Utah where the archaeological record may show evidence of a succession of Puebloan community centers from the AD 500s through the 1200s (Basketmaker III – Pueblo III periods). These remains can be (1) the formation and dissolution of successive, independent, econocentric communities that came and went in a location with economically advantageous qualities (water and arable land); or (2) a single, persistent, sociocentric community...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Carole Graham. Jerry Fetterman. Bryan Shanks.

Drawing from survey level data acquired during recent cultural resource inventories in and near Canyons of the Ancients National Monument in southwestern Colorado, this paper investigates social change and continuity during the Basketmaker III to Pueblo III periods, as evident in the stone tool assemblages of distinct communities. Tool type, ubiquity, location, and association are used to explore trends in technological adaptations, providing insights into the social and economic complexity of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Laurie Webster.

Finely woven yucca cordage sandals appeared in the northern Southwest 2000 years ago as a fully formed craft tradition and continued in use until the early A.D. 1200s. Their complex, labor-intensive weave structures, ornate toe finishes, and elaborate iconography suggest that these sandals played important social and symbolic roles in communities of the San Juan region for more than a millennium before disappearing from the archaeological record in the mid-thirteenth century. In this diachronic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only James Potter.

Located on the southern piedmont of Sleeping Ute Mountain in southwest Colorado, Cowboy Wash Pueblo (5MT7740) is a large, late Pueblo III site containing thirteen kiva depressions and more than thirty rooms. It is the largest site within what has been termed the Cowboy Wash community, yet it is one of the least well documented of all the habitations composing this community. Recent investigations at the site documented a very different configuration for the site than had originally been...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jonathan Driver. Karen Schollmeyer.

In the Mesa Verde region of the southwest USA the intensity of archaeological excavation, coupled with good preservation and high-resolution dating, creates an unusual opportunity to examine spatial and temporal variation in faunal assemblages. We examine methodological issues associated with the analysis of hundreds of assemblages in a small region, and show how thoughtfully selected data provide opportunities to study a number of phenomena, including: differential human impact on animal...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tanachy Bruhns.

The Basketmaker Communities Project (BCP) is a multiyear investigation by Crow Canyon Archaeological Center in Cortez, Colorado of one of the largest Basketmaker III communities known in the central Mesa Verde region. This paper examines a combination of artifact, architectural, and spatial information from 97 sites collected by Woods Canyon Archaeological Consultants and Crow Canyon Archaeological Research Center. By using ESRI’s GIS software to analyze (BCP) data this study applies...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Susan Smith. Karen Adams. Kristin Kuckelman.

For more than 20 years, the Crow Canyon Archaeological Center has systematically acquired flotation, macrobotanical, and pollen samples from structure floors, thermal features, middens, and other contexts during the testing or excavation of many ancestral Pueblo sites dating from a wide range of time periods. In this study, we synthesize uses of plant materials through nearly 500 years of the Pueblo occupation of the Sand Canyon locality in the northern San Juan region. In order to control for...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Shanna Diederichs. Grace Erny. Aryel Rigano.

The foundations of Ancestral Pueblo community organization were codified in aggregated communities during the Basketmaker III Period (A.D. 500-725). This study compares morphological differences in public architecture and habitation pit structures at several aggregated sites in the Northern San Juan Region to reveal functional specialization of space associated with both long-term habitation and periodic communal gathering behavior. This specialization may reflect the primary social institutions...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lara Noldner.

This paper examines the taphonomic distribution of isolated human remains at several archaeological sites in southwestern Colorado, an area occupied by Ancestral Pueblo people from the A.D. 500s to around A.D. 1280. The Crow Canyon Archaeological Center defines isolated human remains as fewer than five disarticulated elements. The majority of isolated skeletal elements analyzed were recovered from Pueblo II and III (A.D. 900-1280) contexts, but earlier Basketmaker III (A.D. 500-750) contexts...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joan Coltrain. Joel Janetski.

The stable isotope chemistry of 149 directly dated Basketmaker II burials from the Four Corners region of the American Southwest indicates relatively heavy reliance on maize and low animal protein intake. Sex and age patterning reveals differences in adult male versus female diets and distinguishes adolescent diets from those of adult males. Hydroxyapatite oxygen isotope values effectively sort individuals relative to the latitude and elevation of burial sites and are further used to clarify the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Grant Coffey. Susan Ryan.

Most studies of ancestral Pueblo communities in the northern San Juan region of southwestern Colorado use clusters of roughly contemporary habitations, often associated with public architecture, to define the spatial extent of residential communities. The term "community" has also been used to define important social groupings at both larger and smaller spatial scales depending on the focus of study and the type of social connection suggested. This study uses the locations of great kivas, one of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kari Schleher. Jamie Merewether. Grant Coffey.

In this paper, we explore temporal and spatial patterns present in the material culture of the Goodman Point Community. The Goodman Point area of southwestern Colorado was home to ancestral Pueblo peoples from the A.D. 600s until depopulation of the broader region around A.D. 1280. Recent laboratory analyses by the Crow Canyon Archaeological Center have produced a large data set of the material culture within the later Goodman Point Community, including data on over 95,000 sherds and 75,000...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Xinyi Liu.

Scholarly interest has increasingly focused on an episode of Old World globalization of food resources that significantly predates the ‘Silk Road’. The impetus behind this growth of interest has been the expansion of bio-archaeological research in Central and East Asia over the past decade. This paper considers the agents responsible for the food globalization process in prehistory and the forms they took. One of the key aspects of the Trans-Eurasian movements of crops in prehistory was that the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sören Stark.

Territorial barriers are a widespread phenomenon in many micro-regions of Western Central Asia where they specifically take the shape of large-scale oasis walls, surrounding the entirety or large parts of the agricultural hinterland of important urban centers vis-à-vis stretches of desert or desert-steppe in the region. Nonetheless, starting with their dating, our understanding of these sizable monuments is still very insufficient. The most monumental and best preserved one of these territorial...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Yan Sun.

This paper will discuss how local communities in the northeastern frontier of China used metal artifacts and mortuary practice to articulate identity and delineate their cultural and political affiliations among themselves in the region and with polities in the Central Plain during the late second and early first millennium BC, which was a period that witnessed the rise and expansion of state powers in the Central Plain, namely, the Shang and Zhou. Previous studies examined material culture from...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joshua Wright. William Honeychurch. Amartuvshin Chunag.

We will report on the initial fieldwork of the Dornod Mongol Survey, an ongoing project in Southeastern Mongolia. This paper will discuss inhabitation and the integration and construction of social landscapes through time, touch upon our methods for recovering this data and ways in which we use it. The structure of our project allows us to challenge the frontier identity of this region in several time periods through chronological frameworks, scales of interaction and integration. Our focus...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tsuimei Huang.

Among the numerous neck/chest ornaments consisting of jade huang pendants (arc-shaped jade pieces) in Chinese archaeological finds, two distinct groups are most noteworthy: the Neolithic (5th-3rd millennia BCE) necklaces from the lower Yangzi valley and the early 1st millennium bead strings of Western Zhou period in the mid and lower Yellow River Valley. Due to the fact that huang pendant is mentioned in Chinese texts as important ancient ritual paraphernalia, these unique artifacts have become...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mandy Jui-man Wu.

In 2004, the grave of Kang Ye was discovered in present day Xi’an, China. According to the epitaph, Kang Ye was a descendant of the kings of Kangju (Kang state, modern Samarkand) and a Zoroastrian priest living in the Northern Zhou kingdom. Inside the tomb were traces of ashes suggesting that Zoroastrian fire ritual had been performed. The skeletal remains were placed over a stone couch-shaped deathbed embellished with ten scenes in linear Chinese-style carvings. Currently, these individual...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Yu Qi Li.

Newly identified pastoral sites in the Mohuchahan Valley have the potential of preserving 3000 years of pastoral settlement history in the middle section of the Tian-Shan Mountains. Located between a rich high-elevation meadow and a low-elevation oasis, this seemly barren valley might have served as an ideal residing place for numerous generations of local nomads. The scale and density of the burials and settlements they left suggest the communities once thrived here in ancient times probably...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Leslie Wallace.

Dress serves as a potent marker of political, cultural and social identity for both the living and the dead. This paper investigates two very different "social skins" worn by elites after death focusing on the silk cap, tunic and dress found in Krugan 6 at Noin Ula in northern Mongolia (early first century CE) and the jade burial suit worn by Zhao Mo (d. 122 BCE), the King of Nanyue, who was buried in the south of China in modern Guangzhou. Although separated by time and navigating different...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sheri Lullo.

This paper presents preliminary research that compares toiletry sets and other items of personal adornment from burials within the political boundaries of Han dynasty China (206 BCE-220 CE) to those found at contemporaneous sites near the westernmost periphery of the empire. Toiletry sets of the Han elite are commonly enclosed in rounded lacquer cases and include items such as bronze mirrors, combs, boxes with cosmetic powders, hair accessories, and other personal possessions. Comparison of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jorge Rios. Juan Carlos Diaz Vazquez.

El arte rupestre, dentro de los contexto arqueológicos, es una herramienta capaz de proveernos información privilegiada acerca de fauna, flora y de comportamiento humano, en el caso de las Cuevas Prehistóricas de Yagul y Mitla en los Valles Centrales de Oaxaca, es uno de los atributos por los cuales, ademas de la evidencia de domesticación temprana de plantas, se ha documentado en una diversidad de motivos que denotan un paso constante humano y su conocimiento del medio que le rodeaba. Las...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Karina Jiménez. Jorge Luis Ríos Allier.

La presente investigación tiene como objetivo mostrar el trabajo realizado en el cerro Danush localizado en la comunidad de San Mateo Macuilxóchitl de Artigas Carranza, Oaxaca; el cual tuvo como eje principal conocer las características que comparten los paneles de pintura rupestre de acuerdo a su ubicación en el cerro Danush, tomando en consideración las singularidades del paisaje. La importancia del estudio de las pinturas rupestres radica en que estas son una de las primeras...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Agustin Andrade.

Una de las regiones que ha sufrido grandes transformaciones a lo largo del tiempo es la del Istmo de Tehuantepec, en particular, la zona de La Ventosa, donde el paisaje de la región va desde que se convierte en un paisaje ocupado por grupos humanos, hace 10,000 a. C., pasando por la época prehispánica, donde se construyeron asentamientos tanto monumentales, como pequeñas áreas habitacionales. No menos importante han sido las transformaciones del mismo paisaje con la instauración de haciendas,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Pedro Ramon Celis.

El sitio arqueológico zapoteco de Yagul, Oaxaca, es conocido por su carácter de ciudad-fortaleza, contando con una gran cantidad de edificios monumentales, una traza urbana definida, y un área habitacional que se extiende más allá del macizo rocoso donde se enclavan los edificios más importantes. Empero poca información se ha referido en cuanto a un elemento que ante su pequeño tamaño, palidece frente a estos contextos mencionados, nos referimos a las pinturas rupestres y petrograbados que se...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dongdong Li. Wenjing Wang.

The late Neolithic in the Jianghan plain is characterized by the emergence of a new kind of settlement pattern. In this period, highly nucleated large local communities were walled as regional centers. In the past decades, the emergence of walled sites has caused hot debates on its social dynamics, particularly on function and causal factors. Most explanations for the emergence of walled sites fall into warfare model and flooding control model. To evaluate those models, we investigate into both...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Paul Zimansky.

From its beginning in the 9th century BC the infrastructure of kingdom of Urartu was built around fortresses. In the early 7th century, the fortress network was enhanced by the construction of new group of massive fortified administrative centers, associated with extramural settlements. Of the latter, Ayanis is the most extensively investigated. Survey and excavations conducted from 1997 to 2009 investigated the relationship between the inhabitants of this settlement and the contoling...

DOCUMENT Citation Only George Lau.

This presentation examines the domain of work as part of the social life of fortified settlements. In particular, it is interested in the gargantuan commitment – physical and symbolic – evidenced in defensive architecture. Using data from Yayno, a large mountaintop citadel in the north highlands of Peru (Recuay culture, AD 200-700), work estimates are presented to demonstrate the great labour expenditure in its stonemasonry constructions. Builders combined massive stone blocks (local granites,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Adria LaViolette.

During its lifespan from the mid-fifteenth to early sixteenth century AD, the fortified settlement of Pujini shared Pemba Island, Tanzania with numerous, undefended, more typical Swahili settlements ranging from earth-and-thatch hamlets to stone-built urban centers. The site expresses a unique combination of qualities on the Eastern African coast: complex ramparts around nearly two hectares of space, in which stood some dozen domestic and special-purpose features. Archaeological evidence from...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Innocent Pikirayi.

Portuguese written sources mention ‘great stone buildings’ including state capitals and fortified hilltops and trading centres in their accounts of the Kingdom of ‘Monomotapa’ (Mutapa State) in northern Zimbabwe in the late 16th and 17th centuries. On the one hand, feiras, the trading centres frequented by the Portuguese, served primarily commercial functions, and only fortified themselves when confronted with external military threats. On the other, the monumental, stone- built structures...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lori Khatchadourian. Ian Lindsay.

In many world regions, the mountain fortress has long stood as little more than a practical instrument of institutionalized force. Such reductionism obscures more than it reveals, for fortresses are equally salient as projects of communal labor, mediators in the making of subjects and authorities, and objects of contestation, curation, and commemoration. In the South Caucasus, fortresses played a crucial role in the reproduction of polities from the Late Bronze Age to the mid-first millennium...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kristin Kuckelman.

The sociopolitical landscape of the ancestral Pueblo peoples residing in the northern San Juan region of the American Southwest was influenced and shaped in significant ways by a variety of pressures associated with the construction and habitation of fortified communities during periods of heightened social tensions and increased violence. Evidence of the formation of fortified communities and the implementation of various defensive strategies dates from at least three major periods of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Bettina Arnold. Manuel Fernandez Goetz.

Walls are assumed to serve as systems of containment and protection in response to social divisiveness but they may also serve to reduce or mask conflict within a society. Their physical form may be entirely expedient, largely symbolic, or some combination of the two. Early Iron Age settlements in west-central Europe were often situated on promontories with wall and ditch systems encircling portions of the occupied terrain but because of the daunting task of excavating such hillfort sites, which...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elizabeth Arkush.

Defensive settlements are often places of relatively rapid, dense nucleation by people with few viable alternatives, resulting in the imperative need to establish new consensual rules for living together. In the Titicaca Basin of Peru, after the collapse of the Tiwanaku state, old political relationships were abandoned and defensive security became essential. In the post-collapse period, large hillfort towns formed by the aggregation of multiple families. What behaviors and attitudes were...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Paul Roscoe.

At contact, New Guinea polities were uniformly at war, either episodically or permanently, with at least one of their neighbors. As a result, they all adopted significant defensive measures, commonly some mix of advanced warning systems, settlement nucleation, and natural or artificial fortifications. These measures were crucial to survival but they had numerous social and cultural implications. In this paper, I outline some of the more important of these consequences, before focusing on the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Adriana Hinojo. Alejandra M. Gómez-Valencia. Blanca E. Contreras-Barragán. Jesús R. Vidal-Solano.

Since 2009, following Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia (INAH) implementation of new public registration protocols for the cultural material heritage, we started an intense work of inventorying, cataloging and registration of the archaeological artifacts recovered during the Sonora –Sinaloa Project/1967 and the project Economic Networks: Mesoamerica and the American Southwest between 1975 – 1978, both conducted by Dr. Richard Pailes. These studies provided the foundations for new...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Daniel Reff.

When examined separately, the archaeological record and early Spanish accounts of Sonora are seemingly insufficient or ambiguous with respect to culture continuity and change. However, critical juxtaposition of the two "data sets" suggests that the late prehistoric period in Sonora was a time when competing chiefdoms or "statelets" embraced slavery and territorial expansion , contributing to processes of ethonogenesis that have confounded previous interpretations of the archaeological and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only William Doolittle.

The Rio Sonora Valley Project directed by Richard A. Pailes in the late 1970s was pivotal in contributing to our understanding of northwest Mexico. It was the first systematic archaeological research conducted in eastern Sonora since Carl Sauer and Donald Brand in the 1930s, and it precipitated later research by John Douglas, Emiliano Gallaga, Elizabeth Bagwell, and most recently Matthew Pailes. The project was not without problems, and critics. As a member of the RSV Project, and one who...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Matthew Pailes.

The potential for the river valleys of eastern Sonora to serve as conduits for long distance trade between Mesoamerica and the U.S. Southwest was one of the original impetuses for research in the region. Researchers of the U.S. Southwest, using the same basic data sets, have come to drastically different conclusions regarding the frequency and overall importance of such long distance connections. Previous research in eastern Sonora has produced minimal direct evidence of long distance trade, but...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cristina García-Moreno.

Our work conducted in 2009 and 2010 in Batacosa, an archaeological site first recorded in 1967 by William Wasley, and later visited by Victoria Dirst, allowed us to determine their full extent and material culture, in addition to date this site to the Batacosa (200 -700 AD) and early Cuchujaqui phases of the south branch of what Richard Pailes defined in 1973 as Río Sonora culture, geographically located in the Sonoran lower foothills. In this paper we present the results obtained by Proyecto...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Patricia Hernandez Espinoza. Adriana Hinojo. Blanca Eréndira Contreras Barragán.

In the past six years the Centro INAH Sonora has turned its gaze to the Archaeological Collections under its charge, keeping priority to conservation, research, documentation and registration of such collections. Key member of this acquis is the collection product of the archaeological research conducted by Dr. Richard Allen Pailes in the year 1967 as part of the Sonora-Sinaloa Project. The main goal of the project was the recognition of different surface locations in the basin of the Mayo and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Carpenter.

The characterization and descriptions of the Rio Sonora and Serrana (formerly known as the southern or Alamos branch of Rio Sonora) archaeological traditions exemplify Richard Pailes’ contributions to the archaeology of Sonora (and northeastern Sinaloa as well) and our current understanding of the serranía region. The Proyecto Arqueológico Río Sahuaripa (PARS) represents the first systematic archaeological investigation of the Sahuaripa River basin, located in eastern Sonora. The primary...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mario Martínez Lara.

The archaeological site of Cacaxtla, is located in the southwest of the modern state of Tlaxcala, Mexico. It has been explored uninterruptedly since 1975, and researchers agree that the site had a long occupation, reaching its height by AD 600-900, and being contemporary to other sites like Teotihuacan. Cacaxtla stands out for its mural painting and, in particular, for its iconography that combines many pictorial traditions from different Mesoamerican sites. In particular, Cacaxtla’s art draws...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Javier Urcid.

The Ñuiñe script from NW Oaxaca and Southern Puebla was an eclectic writing tradition that spanned the 5th through the 9th centuries A.D. Its users shared scribal practices with Zapotec, Teotihuacan, and post-Teotihuacan Highland urban centers, deploying them in novel ways. In this paper the script is used as a proxy to ascertain its shared features with Zapotec and Teotihuacan writing, as well as the extent to which Central Highland polities that thrived politically and economically after the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marcus Winter. Robert Markens. Cira Martínez López.

The centuries from 600 to 900 CE were unusually dynamic times in prehispanic Oaxaca. In the Valley of Oaxaca, population increased and elite Zapotec culture flourished as city-states formed at Monte Albán, Cerro de la Campana, Macuilxóchitl, Lambityeco and Jalieza, and then suddenly collapsed. Surprising connections with the Maya area appear such as Fine Orange and Plumbate pottery as well as possible iconographic and architectural elements, some of these channeled through Southern Isthmus sites...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christopher Beekman.

The Epiclassic has been described as a major watershed in Mesoamerican prehistory, but in different or even contradictory ways. The period has been claimed to usher in a shift from prestige to mercantile economies, religious to military political systems, territorial states to city-states, parochial to international art styles, and in the case of western Mexico, from non-Mesoamerican to Mesoamerican society. These metanarratives have privileged formal characteristics, which are in any case found...

DOCUMENT Citation Only NATALIA MORAGAS SEGURA.

The collapse of Teotihuacan has traditionally marked the passage of the Classic to Epiclassic period in central Mexico.However, concepts like Epiclassic or collapse, they have different consequences if we analyze the urban center of the city or the Teotihuacan territory. In this paper , we focus on the collapse of the urban center of Teotihuacan analyzing the variability of the archaeological record that shows a very complex social process. SAA 2015 abstracts made available in tDAR courtesy of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Juliette Testard.

Recent strontium analyses have revealed that many women buried in the Feathered Serpent Pyramid in Teotihuacan changed their environment at least two times during their lifetime. This suggests that their role, especially in cultural interactions, was particularly important, an hypothesis already presented by Gillespie and Joyce (1997) for maya societies. An iconographic study of mural painting, figurines and sculptures from Cacaxtla-Xochitecatl and Xochicalco, two epiclassic cities well known...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rex Koontz.

Elite public imagery in north-central Veracruz during during the Cacahuatal phase (c. 350-600) focused on frontal presentations of single figures and a restricted iconography. The Late Classic brought considerable changes to elite self-presentation in the region, including a more complex multi-figure narrative format and the palma, a new costume object. Both of these changes were directly related to changes in the visual patterns of public sculpture and the performance of public rites. This...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Keith Jordan.

Although most scholars now reject hypotheses of a Toltec invasion of Yucatan to explain similarities between the art of Tula and Chichen Itza in favor of models involving economic, political, and religious interaction between the two centers, questions remain concerning the nature and timing of this exchange. Some archaeologists and art historians posit a 9th-10th century florescence for "Toltec" Chichen, and argue that since this makes the "Toltec" style in Yucatan older than the Tollan Phase...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Oswaldo Chinchilla.

The Early Classic ascendancy of Teotihuacan was felt strongly on the Pacific Coast of Guatemala, particularly at Montana and related sites on the coastal plain of Escuintla. The Teotihuacan downfall roughly coincided with the demise of those sites, and the rise of a new dominant center Cotzumalhuapa, around A.D. 650. The process seems to parallel the emergence of Epiclassic centers in highland Mexico, and differs in many respects from the Maya Highlands and Lowlands, where there are fewer...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Samantha Krause. Timothy Beach. Sheryl Luzzadder-Beach. Thomas Guderjan.

In our continuing endeavors to better understand Maya wetland formation and agricultural systems across the Maya Lowlands, we now compare natural and anthropogenic wetland field formation. Natural wetland processes can form patterned environments that may be similar visually to intensive, culturally modified, wetland systems. This paper will consider natural factors that can produce similar topography to Maya wetland fields. We will also present aerial photography, GIS, soil stratigraphy, and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Wahl. Lysanna Anderson. Francisco Estrada-Belli.

Environmental change, caused by either human activity or climate variability, has been posited as a contributing factor in causing widespread demographic shifts in the southern Maya lowlands at the end of the Preclassic and Classic periods. Here we present preliminary results of analyses examining environmental change during and after the period of Pre-Columbian Maya settlement. Environmental reconstructions are based on a multi-proxy approach, including pollen, macroscopic charcoal, stable...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lindsay Duncan. Elizabeth Graham.

Set in a coastal wetland environment, Marco Gonzalez—to paraphrase the session abstract—is a repository of sediments, fauna, artefacts and plant remains, pertinent to an understanding of human-environment interactions. Marco Gonzalez is also an area of naturally occurring coral sand, grasses and sedges that has been transformed over time into cultivable land. Our preliminary results indicate, however, an inadvertent, rather than planned, transformation. Nonetheless, the site can be characterised...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Doyle McKey. Mélisse Durécu. Marion Comptour. Christine Raimond. Axelle Solibiéda.

The study of pre-Columbian raised-field agriculture is marked by several unresolved questions: How did raised fields function as agroecosystems? Were they cultivated continuously or were fallow periods incorporated? What population densities did they support? Did making and managing raised-field landscapes require top-down control in a hierarchical society (or supervision by specialists)? Can raised-field agriculture play any role in reconciling food production and ecosystem services in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Delphine Renard. Anne Zangerle. Doyle McKey.

Some South American lowland environments bear impressive legacies of pre-Columbian agriculture: vestiges of raised fields that have persisted since their abandonment centuries or millennia ago. In an interdisciplinary approach, we aim at understanding how the construction and use of raised fields in the past influence the functioning of these ecosystems today. In a raised-field landscape in a seasonally flooded coastal savanna of French Guiana, we characterized the distribution of soil...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Eleanor Harrison-Buck.

The Belize River East Archaeology (BREA) project is examining the wetlands of the eastern Belize Watershed. Within this 6000 km2 study area, there exists 122 km2 of perennial wetlands (28% of all wetlands in Belize). Here we report on the beginning stages of our investigations of an expansive wetland area in the northern part of the BREA study area. Through aerial survey we have identified ditched and drained fields and other canal features that resemble ancient wetland features found elsewhere...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Timothy Beach. Sheryl Luzzadder-Beach. Samantha Krause. Melisa Bishop. Duncan Cook.

This paper has two main goals: first to present our latest findings for wetland field formation from a series of 2014 palustrine, floodplain, and lacustrine cores, and second to consider the relative strengths and weaknesses of the different approaches to coring: piston-, soil-, and vibra-coring compared with excavation in these environments. We first present how the new cores from 2014 at Akab Muclil and Laguna Verde compare with previous coring and excavation data toward understanding ancient...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Walker.

Pre-Columbian earthworks in the Llanos de Mojos show discrete spatial patterns, at different scales. For example, large mounds and causeways are found in the southeast, causeways and raised fields in the south, and large raised fields in the center and to the north. Recent excavations in forest islands associated with raised fields in Central Mojos identify occupations dating to the second millennium BCE. This raises the question of how to integrate different elements into histories of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Maria Bruno.

One of the most dynamic debates in the archaeology of the Lake Titicaca Basin of the Andes surrounds the appearance and disappearance of raised-field farming. There is now a general consensus that raised-fields were a Formative period indigenous technology that was expanded upon by the Tiwanaku state and that fell out of use, except in small pockets, when the state declined. In this paper, I use ethnographic and archaeological data from the Taraco Peninsula, Bolivia to tackle the rather nebulous...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Robert Griffin. Nicholas Dunning. Tom Sever. William Saturno.

Examination of satellite imagery in 2006 revealed a number of linear features of varying lengths in a remote section of the Bajo de Azucar, a large swampy depression in northeast Guatemala. Ground exploration and excavation of several of these features in 2007 and 2008 documented a combination of natural and anthropogenic origins. We argue that the ancient Maya modified and extended natural channels within the bajo for several possible reasons: 1) to facilitate transportation across a difficult...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Colleen Hanratty. Thomas Guderjan. Sheryl Luzzader-Beach. Timothy Beach. Samantha Krause.

In recent years, we have identified numerous sets of ditched agricultural fields along the Rio Hondo floodplain. In this paper we examine the paleogeographic and archaeological contexts of these fields. The commonalities of their settings offer perspective on their social functions and insight into who controlled them and how this control was manifest into settlement patterns. We discuss the geography of the riverine zone, the settings in which ditched fields are found and known related...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Camille Weinberg. Benjamin Nigra. Maria Cecilia Lozada. Charles Stanish. Henry Tantaleán.

Ethnohistorical and archaeological sources establish that the Chincha Valley on Peru’s south coast hosted a populous and economically complex polity during the Late Intermediate Period (1200-1470 CE). A 2013 survey of the middle valley revealed more than 40 cemeteries containing over five hundred highly visible, above-ground collective tombs resembling highland chullpas. To establish a baseline demographic profile for this mortuary tradition, we conducted an osteological analysis of one looted...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brittany Jackson. Jacob Bongers. Susanna Seidensticker. Terrah Jones. Gail Kennedy.

This paper considers evidence for population health and lifestyle in the Chincha polity during the Late Intermediate Period (LIP) (c. 1000-1400 AD) and Late Horizon (LH) (c. 1400-1532 AD). Beginning with the Chroniclers, scholars have described the Chincha as a large complex society with population organized into distinct economic sectors (e.g., coastal fishermen, merchant core, and inland agriculturalists). Previous archaeological studies have demonstrated evidence for fishermen and artisans in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Terrah Jones. Jacob Bongers. Brittany Jackson. Susanna Seidensticker. Charles Stanish.

This paper considers how material culture reflects the manipulation and creation of identity through a reexamination of the Chincha ceramic typology using ceramic vessels recovered from two mid- Chincha Valley domestic contexts dating to the Late Intermediate Period (LIP) (1000-1400 AD) and the Late Horizon (LH) (1400-1532 AD). The Chincha Kingdom was an extensive and powerful trading polity that emerged during the LIP and continued into the LH. Previous studies identify three distinct zones...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kelita Perez.

La costa sur del Perú en la época prehispánica fue un área geográfica donde se concentraron distintos grupos sociales. Entre ellos se evidencia la ocupación Carmen, un grupo social local que se desarrolló en los valles de Chincha y Pisco y se encuentra ubicado cronológicamente entre los 200 d.C. y los 400 d. C. En esta ponencia tratamos sobre la arquitectura y cerámica recientemente recuperadas mediante la excavación de dos sitios arqueológicos (Cerro del Gentil y Pampa del Gentil) del valle...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Henry Tantaleán.

En esta ponencia se analizan los contextos de banquetes y funerarios para explicar el uso de un sitio Paracas Tardío con características originalmente rituales-políticas para fines de recreación de las élites locales mediante practicas de rituales e internamiento de los cuerpos de individuos de élites locales. se explora el potencial del uso del concepto de huaca para época Paracas y se señalan una serie de indicadores arqueológicos para identificar otros posibles contextos similares...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jacob Bongers. Brittany Jackson. Terrah Jones. Susanna Seidensticker. Charles Stanish.

This paper investigates post-mortem human body manipulation associated with above-ground and semi-subterranean tombs known as chullpas, which date from the Late Intermediate Period (A.D. 1000-1476) to the Late Horizon (A.D. 1400-1532) in the mid-Chincha Valley, Peru. Mortuary rituals are cross-cultural social processes that comprise a range of practices. One such practice is the treatment of deceased bodies which varies across time, space, and social organization. A 2013 survey of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Charles Stanish.

The Pampa de Carmen above the Chincha valley contains a series of Paracas period archaeological features including geoglyphs, ceremonial mounds, settlements and small stone structures. I discuss how these features integrate the pampa into a monumental ritual landscape focused on five major settlements. I interpret these features to be a means to attract people from outside the region to periodic market fairs held in the neutral chaupiyungas areas between highlands and coast. These fairs...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Benjamin Nigra.

Huaca Soto is one of the best preserved pre-Columbian platform mounds in the Chincha Valley and perhaps the largest standing example of Paracas monumental architecture on the south coast. Excavation in the huaca’s western-most sunken court in 2014 yielded a sequence of ritual deposition stretching from the Paracas Formative through the Inka Period. While the mound’s substructure and earliest occupation levels are squarely associated with Paracas post-fire resin painted wares and architectural...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Juan Martin. Rainer Schreg. Tomás Mendizábal. Dolores Piperno. Richard Cooke.

Aerial photography has been known as an extremely useful tool of archaeological prospection for nearly one century. In recent years however it gained increasing importance by two reasons: First the availability of high quality aerial photographs via internet made it quite easy to start archaeological surveys even in remote areas. Second archaeological perspectives on past human societies changed in recent decades. Modern ecological problems caused an increasing interest in landscape...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Frederick Hanselmann. Christopher Horrell. Melanie Damour-Horrell. Bert Ho.

For more than 500 years, Panamá’s Chagres River has been a nexus for maritime activity. The river served as the original trans-isthmian passage between the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean where precious metals, gems, and other commodities were transported in support of Spain’s empire and mercantilist policies. The wealth created by this trade led to the establishment of Spanish cities, ports, and fortifications on either side of the isthmus protecting the maritime borderland of Spanish...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jessica Manion. Geoffrey McCafferty. Carrie Dennett.

In 2008, housing development on the shore of Lake Xolotlan in a suburb of Managua discovered an extensive cemetery dating to the Late Tempisque period, ca. 1­300 CE. Dozens of individuals were recovered, along with a rich array of grave goods. A new phase of development in 2014 has been closely monitored by the Nicaraguan Institute of Culture. In July heavy machinery exposed a number of additional skeletons and a team from the University of Calgary volunteered to assist in the excavation...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Francisco Corrales-Ulloa. Adrián Badilla-Cambronero.

Exchange and consumption of various goods in late prehistoric period chiefdom societies of the Diquís Delta, southern Costa Rica is discussed. Because of its geographical position and socio-economic development the Diquís region had a major role in exchange and regional relations, in Greater Chiriquí (southeastern Costa Rica and western Panama), and at the extra regional level (southern Central America). Various goods (metal objects, statuary, polychrome and biscuit pottery, polished axes, stone...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lana Martin.

This paper examines patterns in plant and animal remains excavated from midden contexts at Sitio Drago, a 1400-year-old village site located on a Caribbean island in Panama. To date, most studies of farming and foraging in ancient Panama have focused on villages located in the central highlands and Pacific foothills – regions with a cooler, drier tropical climate that better facilitates agricultural productivity. Although highly informative, these studies alone do not provide us with a complete...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Scott Palumbo.

This paper reviews the evidence for mortuary ranking in pre-Columbian Costa Rica and Panama, specifically as it relates to participation in broader trade and exchange networks. An interpretative approach originally developed by Halstead and O'Shea is evaluated against the Binford-Saxe model. SAA 2015 abstracts made available in tDAR courtesy of the Society for American Archaeology and Center for Digital Antiquity Collaborative Program to improve digital data in archaeology. If you are the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Thomas Wake.

Sitio Drago is a large (18 ha) pre-Columbian settlement strategically located on the NW corner of Isla Colon, Bocas del Toro, Panama. Prior to the 21st Century Bocas del Toro had been characterized as recently colonized, poorly populated, having a relatively low degree of sociopolitical elaboration and isolated. Continuing research over the last 10 years on Isla Colon, focusing on Sitio Drago, illustrates that the site and by extension, the region, has a much longer population history, a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tomas Mendizabal. Jordi Tresserras. Javier Laviña. Ricardo Piqueras. Marta Hidalgo.

The first free African peoples of the Americas were the inhabitants of the town of La Villa de Santiago del Príncipe, founded in 1579 when Don Luis de Mozambique and his followers became the first group of cimarrones (escaped slaves) to negotiate a peace with the Spanish Crown, after decades of what came to be known as the "Cimarron wars". These were a conflict in which cimarrones would predate upon Spanish isthmian trade routes and even support foreign attacks on the mainland. Weary of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jaime Awe.

In a series of articles published in the 1980’s, and in the subsequent volume "A Forest of Kings", David Freidel, and Linda Schele and Freidel demonstrated that the institution of kingship had been firmly established in the Maya lowlands by the Late Preclassic period. Twenty five years later, ongoing research in Belize and the Peten now suggests that this level of cultural complexity may have actually arisen by the Middle Preclassic period. One line of evidence that strongly supports this...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stanley Guenter.

"A Forest of Kings" was groundbreaking for its integration of epigraphy, archaeology, and ethnohistory. In their book, Schele and Freidel discussed the Early Classic Teotihuacan-Maya cultural and political interaction as well as the fall of Copan, and the larger issue of the collapse of Classic Maya cities, and even the fall of Postclassic Mayapan. In this presentation I wish to expand on and integrate these disparate themes in an effort to answer the question of why the Colonial era Maya...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marcello Canuto.

Over the past 25 years, epigraphic research on the Classic Maya has demonstrated that political alliances and warfare were not only widespread but also structured in such a manner to suggest a greater degree of political centralization than originally contemplated. Texts carved on ancient monuments suggest that lowland Maya society of the Classic period (AD 250-850) was characterized by a rivalry between two major capital cities, Calakmul and Tikal, who sought to dominate the Maya lowlands....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michelle Rich.

More than 10 years of research at El Perú-Waka’, carried out under the co-direction of David Freidel and several Guatemalan collaborators, has resulted in a wealth of information about this ancient city and the role its rulers and residents played in the Classic Maya world. Enhanced through his work with Linda Schele, Freidel’s persistent focus on the interplay between ancient history and archaeology—on stelae, buildings, and people—has shaped research at Waka’, located in Guatemala’s Laguna del...