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A Reimagining Of The Chacoan World, Larry Benson, Richard W. Loose

United States Geological Survey: Staff Publications

A new paradigm of the Chacoan world is presented, wherein Chaco Canyon is considered to be a mostly unoccupied architectural complex that functioned primarily as a pilgrimage destination. Chaco was the political, religious, and social focal point of people living in outlying regions. The resident population of the Canyon consisted of a small number of caretakers, charged with maintaining great house structures, food supplies, and their ceremonial contents. Chacoan chiefdoms were mostly located in large, well-watered, agriculturally-based communities situated at the base of mountains that ring the San Juan Basin, e.g., the Chuskas. Chiefly elites lived year-round in those areas, …

Contextualizing A Maya Collection From Alta Verapaz, Guatemala, At The University Of Ghent, Belgium, Julia Montoya

Zea E-Books Collection

The aim of the present study is to contextualize a collection of Maya artifacts that have been kept for 125 years at the University of Ghent, in Belgium. The objects came from one of the first archaeological excavations carried out in Guatemala, between 1880 and 1900. The collection includes 130 pottery pieces, 64 jadeite pieces, 24 stone objects (serpentine, silex, and other stones), and 52 obsidian pieces. The study started in 2016, with the identification and location of the provenance site, which was visited in 2017. The phases of documentation and photographic registration of the objects were completed in 2019. …

Congreso Internacional Sobre Iconografía Precolombina, Barcelona 2019. Actas., Victòria Solanilla Demestre Editora

Zea E-Books Collection

Victòria Solanilla Demestre, Introducción Actas Congreso • Melissa Mattioli, The Ramey Incised Pottery of Cahokia (IL) USA: Diffusion and Reinterpretation of its Iconographic Message • Luís Abejez y Cristina Corona Jamaica, Iconografía en el paisaje. Vida cotidiana y prácticas sociales en el arte rupestre en el noreste de México • Patricia Ochoa Castillo, Figurillas masculinas con atributos de rango, del Centro de México, durante el Formativo • Anabel Villalonga Gordaliza, Ancestros, nahuales y hombres (I). Las host figurines teotihuacanas: hacia una definición, caracterización tipológica y acercamiento iconográfico • Marina Valls i García, Vida y Sacrificio: Los nueve rituales para la …

The Ramey Incised Pottery Of Cahokia (Il) Usa: Diffusion And Reinterpretation Of Its Iconographic Message, Melissa Mattioli

Congreso internacional sobre iconografía precolombina, Barcelona 2019. Actas.

Una interpretación iconográfica adaptada y adoptada por toda la zona Mississippiana. Cahokia es el asentamiento más antiguo y más grande en la América del Norte precolombina. Situado a pocos kilómetros de la actual ciudad de St. Louis, MO (USA), este sitio arqueológico se convirtió en el mayor asentamiento Mississippiano desde la mitad del siglo XI hasta su abandono, al final del siglo XIV. El modelo cosmológico Mississippiano, trasmitido a través de la iconografía de la cerámica Ramey Incised, generalmente está relacionado con los mundos superior e inferior. Tradicionalmente, se reconoce que la presencia de la cosmógrafia de estilo Cahokiano fuera …

Oficiantes Mochica Medio En San José De Moro: El Sacerdote Lechuza Y La Sacerdotisa, Karim Ruiz Rosell

Congreso internacional sobre iconografía precolombina, Barcelona 2019. Actas.

Las tumbas Mochica Medio de El Sacerdote Lechuza y La Sacerdotisa de San José de Moro (SJM) esbozan una identidad individual particular y relacionan a los individuos enterrados con una élite ceremonial en la que habrían desempeñado funciones de oficiantes adscritas a los rituales en los que dichos personajes aparecen en la iconografía. Por un lado, la tumba del Sacerdote Lechuza, llena de alusiones iconográficas a la lechuza (metales y cerámica) que remiten a la figura del Sacerdote Lechuza; por otro lado, la tumba de la Sacerdotisa, con varios elementos del “Tema de la Presentación” tallados en concha …

Ancient Peruvian Textiles In The Vatican Museums And Their Link To The Musée Du Trocadéro Collections, Jean-François Genotte

PreColumbian Textile Conference VIII / Jornadas de Textiles PreColombinos VIII (2019)

The Vatican Museums keep a small collection of about sixty textile fragments mostly Lambayeque, Chimu and Chancay dating back to Late Intermediate Period. Unfortunately, the archaeological provenance of these items is not known. This paper offers a first overview of the history of the collection, describing its contents and, in more details, its most interesting fabrics. We will then suggest that some fragments of the Vatican collection might have been part of textiles once kept in the Musée du Trocadéro, and nowadays preserved in the Quai Branly Museum in Paris.

Los Museos del Vaticano conservan una pequeña colección de unos …

Recontextualizando El Patrimonio Arqueológico: Los Textiles Paracas Descubiertos Por Engel En Cabezas Largas, Jessica Lévy Contreras

PreColumbian Textile Conference VIII / Jornadas de Textiles PreColombinos VIII (2019)

Resumen El archivo de Frédéric Engel, arqueólogo suizo quien trabajó en la costa sur del Perú entre los años 1950 y 1960, representa un patrimonio documental importante conservado en el Museo Nacional de Antropología, Biodiversidad, Agricultura y Alimentación (MUNABA) de la Universidad Nacional Agraria La Molina en Lima. Gracias a la revisión de los registros gráficos y fotográficos de las excavaciones realizadas en Cabezas Largas, sitio ubicado en la Península de Paracas, y particularmente de los materiales hallados en la tumba T.27, este artículo presenta los principales textiles asociados a la parafernalia ritual de siete fardos funerarios para tratar de …

Introduction Into The History Of The Textile Collection At The Ethnological Museum Berlin, Beatrix Hoffmann

PreColumbian Textile Conference VII / Jornadas de Textiles PreColombinos VII (2016)

When the Ethnological Museum at Berlin was founded, it counted already with several hundred pieces from South America. Only a minor part them belonged to pre-Columbian cultures from the Andes. While most of these pieces were ceramics almost no ancient fabrics could be found in the collection. This reflected the collector’s interests focusing on objects made of ceramic, stone or metal and on human remains. Consequently, the first pieces of fabric reached the museum at Berlin as parts of mummy cloths. This did not change until 1879, when the collection of Reiss and Stübel was acquired for the museum. It …

The Arizona Openwork (Tonto) Shirt Project, Carol James

PreColumbian Textile Conference VII / Jornadas de Textiles PreColombinos VII (2016)

In 1923 a pair of hikers came across a series of objects in a cave near the Salt River in Arizona. Among the objects was an elaborate sprang shirt, later given to the Arizona State Museum where it remains to this date. The cotton yarn in the shirt was subjected to Carbon Dating and assigned a probable origin date of the 12th century. In order to better understand the shirt, a replica was made in early 2015. Diverse technical challenges included hand spinning an appropriate cotton yarn, mapping the pattern, accurately copying the irregularities, and creating the neckline. The project …

Mexica Textiles: Archaeological Remains From The Sacred Precincts Of Tenochtitlan And Tlatelolco, Leonardo López Luján, Salvador Guilliem Arroyo

PreColumbian Textile Conference VII / Jornadas de Textiles PreColombinos VII (2016)

In contrast with the rich written and iconographical data from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries concerning Mexica textiles, discoveries of such materials in archaeological contexts in Mexico City are quite rare. This paucity is reflected in our archaeological collections, in spite of the fact that the imperial Mexica capital received in tribute and trade copious amounts of unprocessed cotton, thread, cord, fabric, and clothing, and that the sister cities, Tenochtitlan and Tlatelolco, were bustling centers of textile production. The few Mexica examples extant today are in poor condition and have survived thanks to being carbonized during rituals prior to their …

Precolumbian Textiles In The Ethnological Museum In Berlin, Lena Bjerregaard, Torben Huss

Zea E-Books Collection

The Ethnological Museum in Berlin, Germany, houses Europe’s largest collection of PreColumbian textiles—around 9000 well-preserved examples. Lena Bjerregaard, editor and compiler of this volume, was the conservator for these materials from 2000 to 2014, and she worked with many international researchers to analyze and publicize the collection. This book includes seven of their essays about the museum’s holdings – by Bea Hoffmann, Ann Peters, Susan Bergh, Lena Bjerregaard, Jane Feltham, Katalin Nagy, and Gary Urton. The book’s second part is a 177-page catalogue, arranged by periods and styles, of 273 selected items that represent the collection as fully as possible, …

The Relevance Of Maize Pollen For Assessing The Extent Of Maize Production In Chaco Canyon, Carrie C. Heitman, Phil R. Geib

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

Opinion is hardly unanimous, but many authors endorse the idea that Chaco Canyon is and was a marginal place for growing corn (Zea mays), a chief source of food energy for Puebloan groups in the Southwest. Poor soils with “toxic” levels of salts, inadequate and unpredictable precipitation, and a short growing season have all been identified as contributing to the agricultural marginality of the place (Benson 2011a; Bryan 1954; Force et al. 2002; Judd 1954:59–61). Benson has been the most vocal proponent of this view of late, and his research has culminated in the conclusion that “the San Juan Basin, …

Review Of Holy Ground, Healing Water: Cultural Landscapes At Waconda Lake, Kansas. By Donald J. Blakeslee., Lauren W. Ritterbush

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences

In Holy Ground, Healing Water readers are treated to a historical journey through the changing cultural landscapes of the Waconda Lake area, northcentral Kansas. This region provides the setting for discussion of unique and representative Native American and EuroAmerican cultural developments in the Great Plains. Don Blakeslee, anthropologist with Wichita State University, briefly reviews roughly 13,000 years ofNative traditions, based on archaeological investigations in the region, then discusses the Pawnee Trail, early European and Euro-American expeditions, complex Native-Native and Native-Euro-American interactions during the 19th century, sacred and secular perceptions and uses of Waconda Spring, and Lincoln Park, a local example …

Review Of Light From Ancient Campfires: Archaeological Evidence For Native Lifeways On The Northern Plains. By Trevor R. Peck., Matthew Boyd

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences

Despite the relatively long legacy of professional archaeological research in the northern Great Plains, few comprehensive syntheses of the region's 13,000- year human history have been produced in recent years. This is particularly the case for the Canadian side of the region, which has tended to be overlooked in most scholarly summaries of Great Plains prehistory. The shadowy nature of the Canadian prairies to the wider community of Plains archaeologists is not due to a lack of archaeological research in the region-Alberta, alone, has over 35,000 registered sites-but instead reflects the poor dissemination ofCRM (Culture Resource Management) reports and other …

Archaeoparasitology Of Chaco Canyon, Rachel Paseka

Department of Environmental Studies: Undergraduate Student Theses

Ancient cultures of the Colorado Plateau have been a focus of archaeoparasitology since its inception, and a vast parasitological history is recorded in coprolites preserved in this arid region. The inhabitants of Chaco Canyon dominated Ancestral Puebloan culture between 1050 and 1120 AD and were responsible for the construction of great towns, road systems, and early agriculture. Analysis of the parasites preserved in fecal remains contributes to an increased knowledge of ancient Chacoan health and culture. Nineteen coprolites from four sites in Chaco Canyon were rehydrated and analyzed microscopically for parasite remains. Rhabditiform and filariform nematode larvae were found from …

Chapter 4 Hopi Kachinas: A Life Force, Barton Wright

Hopi Nation: Essays on Indigenous Art, Culture, History, and Law

“Everything has an essence or life force, and humans must interact with these or fail to survive.”


It is not known where the Kachina Cult originated, but some evidence points to a Meso-American origin, brought possibly with the clans which migrated from north to south and north again. There are a few archaeological hints which indicate that there was a viable Kachina Cult by the time the Hopi settled at the center of their world in 1100. The Kachina Cult is shared with all the other Pueblo peoples who live to the east, from Zuni to Taos and formerly Pecos …

The Direct-Historical Approach In Pawnee Archeology (With Six Plates), Waldo R. Wedel, Jade Robison , Depositor

Nebraska State Historical Society: Transactions and Reports

The direct-historical approach in archaeology assumes the existence of an analogous relationship between historic accounts and prehistoric data, serving to establish cultural identity under the basis of cultural continuity. In this article, Dr. Waldo Wedel uses the direct-historical approach to review some preliminary findings of archaeological investigations undertaken as part of an early effort to study the Pawnee culture of eastern Nebraska. The University of Nebraska Archeological Survey was established in 1929, led by Dr. W. D. Strong, in an attempt to better understand prehistoric Pawnee culture. Previous evidence existed in the form of A. T. Hill’s artifact collection and …