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

DOCUMENT Citation Only Juliana Novic.

The degree to which the residents of neighborhoods form integrated communities with uniform social, political, and economic conditions is highly variable. I define neighborhoods, in agreement with most earlier definitions, as based on place and presence in an urbanized environment. The forms and functions of neighborhoods, and their relationships to larger socio-political urban processes, is not well understood for preindustrial societies. Are neighborhoods fully integrated communities or are...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Edward Swenson.

Anthropologists have argued that early urban neighborhoods were equivalent to small villages that maintained kinship relations and economic dependencies characteristic of the rural sphere. Other scholars have noted that different urban centers (including in Mesoamerica, Angkor, and New Kingdom Egypt) were similarly configured as "sociograms" of larger territorial and ethnic boundaries. The political landscape of the North Coast of Peru offers important comparative data by which to assess the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Pacifico. Lise Truex.

Dr. Pacifico and Dr. Truex provide opening reflections and orienting comments regarding the diverse perspectives and case studies presented in this symposium on excavating and theorizing neighborhoods. 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 author of this presentation you may upload your paper, poster, presentation, or associated data ...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nicholas Conard. Britt Starkovich.

This paper examines changing patterns of subsistence during the Lower, Middle and Upper Paleolithic of Central Europe. We present data on faunal assemblages from our excavations in Germany and look at the extent to which the selection and exploitation of prey reflects expectations from behavioral ecological models. We also consider how these faunal assemblages inform us about the evolution of social and economic behavior during the Middle and Late Pleistocene. SAA 2015 abstracts made available...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brian Stewart. Peter Mitchell.

There is arguably nowhere more susceptible to the tyranny of the ethnographic record than southern Africa. From Man the Hunter’s quintessential foragers to the revisionists’ marginalized proletariat, Kalahari hunter-gatherers cast shadows far longer than those created by the desert sun. There is no denying that this extraordinary record – central to both economic and social approaches to southern African prehistory – has greatly enriched our picture of the past. Unsurprisingly, however, the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Steven Kuhn. Mary Stiner.

One of the challenges of Paleoanthropology is developing coherent models for ancient social and economic systems that have no close analogues in the recent archaeological and historical records. Systematic observations of variability among recent foragers produced by Binford, Kelly and others, are vital tools for understanding early humans. They provide necessary frames of reference for predicting variation, and for understanding why observations may not fit predictions. In a 2001 paper we...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mike Cannon. David Meltzer.

Among the many important contributions that Robert Kelly has made to the archaeological and anthropological literature are 1) an elegant theoretical model of forager residential movement, presented in his book The Foraging Spectrum, 2) a very influential argument about the Paleoindian colonization of the Americas, which he developed along with Lawrence Todd, and 3) insightful discussions of landscape learning by hunter-gatherers. Here, we explore these issues further by expanding Kelly’s...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Raven Garvey. Robert Bettinger.

The behavioral ecological approach Kelly champions in the Foraging Spectrum has clearly enhanced our understanding of hunter-gatherer diversity. Still, despite important developments in modeling and comparative analysis in the twenty years since first publication, occasional stark contrasts between groups living in similar environments suggest that ecological factors and adaptive behaviors cannot alone account for the impressive record of ethnographic and archaeological diversity. We consider...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gustavo Politis.

Twenty years ago the Foraging Spectrum highlighted the variability in forager behavior around the world and generated several models to reconstruct the lifeways of these kind of societies in the past. However, contemporary tropical rainforest hunter-gatherers of South America are still underrepresented in the current debate and they are rarely used as a source of analogy to interpret prehistoric foragers. This is partially due to the existence of several myths about them that still persist in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ashley Lemke.

Robert Kelly’s seminal work, The Foraging Spectrum, cataloged diversity among ethnographic foragers to demonstrate the tremendous range of cultural, economic, demographic, and political systems within the broad category, "hunter-gatherer." While we have a clear understanding that ethnographic foragers are diverse, archaeological interpretations of prehistoric hunter-gatherers still tend to be seen through the lens of ethnographic analogy. The creative and critical use of ethnographic data is...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Scott Simmons. Elizabeth Graham.

Ancient Maya occupation on Ambergris Caye has been documented from Preclassic through Postclassic times. Work at the site of Marco Gonzalez has concentrated on several structures in which we have found solid evidence for connections to Maya polities in northern Belize and beyond. Nonetheless, relationships with mainland communities changed substantially over time. Although the northern location of the caye makes it seem logical that its closest connections were with north-central Belize...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Carmen Ting.

This paper investigates the role played by Marco Gonzalez in the production and exchange of elite wares, as represented by the Zakpah ceramics, during the Early Postclassic period. Located in Ambergris Caye off the coast of northern Belize, Marco Gonzalez was occupied continuously throughout the Classic to Postclassic transition, with strong Early Postclassic (ca. AD950/1000–1200/1250) evidence yielding one of the largest Zakpah ceramic assemblages alongside Lamanai. By using various...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anne Pyburn.

Variations in the architecture, settlement patterns, local environmental context, and occupational history of Maya archaeological sites are difficult to assess. Which differences are culturally meaningful? Which similarities indicate social relationships, and if so what sort of relationships? Which differences are simply a result of local climate and available building materials? In this paper I will examine some of the similarities and differences among the three Maya sites in North-Central...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Helen Haines. Sagebiel Kerry.

Discussions of ancient socio-political interactions are most productive when site-specific archaeological data is incorporated into a multi-scalar analysis that includes centres of different distinction. The ability to integrate centres into a nuanced landscape is a luxury derived from a long legacy of archaeological work by different researchers. This work draws upon the increasing large corpus of data created for north-central Belize over the last 50 years. In this paper, we present a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joshuah Lockett-Harris. Helen Haines. Kerry Sagebiel.

Northern Belize during the Middle Formative Period (1000-300 B.C.E.) has increasing become recognized as a critical locus in the development of Lowland Maya socio-political complexity. This period witnessed the founding of numerous ceremonial centers, substantial material cultural innovation, and the advent of mortuary practices indicating developing social differentiation in Northern Belize. Recent excavations at the site of Ka’Kabish in Northern Belize have uncovered evidence significantly...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sherman Horn. Terry Powis. David Pendergast.

A half-century of targeted excavations in northern Belize has generated one of the most detailed databases of Middle Preclassic (900 – 350 B.C.) settlement in the Maya Lowlands. Information from sites such as Cuello, K’axob, and Colha has provided the basis for economic and political models of Preclassic development in northern Belize and the eastern Maya Lowlands in general. The comparatively modest Classic-period architecture at these sites permitted extensive exposures of early occupations,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Toni Gonzalez. Helen R. Haines.

During three field seasons, chultuns were investigated at three small groups representing the settlement zone, public space, and core near the main plaza of Ka’Kabish. Puleston asserted that chultuns must have a utilitarian function because they are overwhelmingly found in rural, domestic contexts. This very processualist logic denies the possibility of domestic ritual that is so prevalent in Maya ethnography. Furthermore, at Ka’Kabish, Uaxactun, Nakum and other sites, chultuns are regularly...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Wolff. Tracie Mayfield.

Very few studies have focused on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Northwestern Belize and to this end, the relationships between people, space, and objects operating within this region during the late colonial period are poorly understood. Previous archaeological investigations at Lamanai recovered data that clearly indicated the presence of materials associated with day-to-day behaviors generally linked to late-colonial industrial and residential activities; such as cooking and eating,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Karen Pierce. Claude Belanger. Elizabeth Graham.

Individual structures of the ‘Ottawa’ Plaza N10[3] Palace Group at Lamanai have been the focus of excavation at various times since Pendergast’s first investigations there in 1981. The time of inception of construction remains unknown, but the group is notable in that its structures were altered, added to, and occupied into the Early Postclassic period. Recent excavations of Str. N10-15 have yielded information on a flurry of activity in the Late and Terminal Classic. Results will be discussed...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kerry Sagebiel.

As viewed through a ceramic lens, it is becoming evident that North-Central Belize was distinct from surrounding areas. Starting in the Middle Preclassic, the ceramics of the Swasey/Bladen Sphere of North-Central Belize are notably different than those of adjacent areas of the Belize Valley, Peten, and Yucatan. The extent of the Middle Preclassic Swasey/Bladen Sphere is becoming clearer with work at Ka’Kabish and the surrounding area. Similarly, the Terminal Classic/Early Postclassic ceramics...