Emerging Perspectives: A New Cross-Contextual Analysis of the Niche Monument Corpus

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Preclassic niche monuments, found from Guatemala to Chiapas to Veracruz, portray anthropomorphic figures emerging from a high-relief cavity. Presently there is no extant study of niche monuments that assembles the entire corpus and situates them within a broader matrix of exchange via trade, interaction and linguistics. In this paper, I will present my analysis of the corpus of niche monuments and their context, as well as their geographic and chronological qualities (when available), in order to interpret the ways in which these monuments functioned within the larger matrix of sociopolitical exchange during the Preclassic period. Once I have gathered the corpus I will perform an iconographic analysis of the monuments within the corpus. These analyses will hopefully provide greater insight into the Middle Preclassic-Late Preclassic transition.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 25135