592 research outputs found
Importation of Obsidian at Cerro Palenque, Honduras: Results of an Analysis by EDXRF
The results of source analysis by EDXRF of obsidian artifacts from the Mesoamerican site of Cerro Palenque in Honduras are reported and changes over time discussed. Sources of obsidian include Ixtepeque, El Chayal, Jalapa, San Martin Jilotepeque, and San Barolome in Guatemala. Some Pachuca obsidian from Mexico was also found. Honduran sources include La Esperanza and La Union. The implications of the obsidian sources are discussed in the context of changes at Cerro Palenque over time as it becomes the largest settlement in the lower Ulua Valley (Sula Valley) in the ninth century AD
Social Memory and Ritualized Practice in Prehispanic Honduras
This paper discusses ritualized practices in domestic spaces as signs of an ongoing and dynamic engagement between the people living there and non-human material and incorporeal social actors, using archaeological evidence from the ancient town of Cerro Palenque and related sites in northwestern Honduras occupied from the 7th to 11th centuries. The paper considers the ways that figurines, pottery, and other kinds of material culture were given meaning through their involvement in these ritualized practices, the materiality of the objects themselves, and their association with human bones. These practices are situated in particular spaces and occur at particular points in the life cycle of individuals and the social groups. They leave behind traces that reflect the desire of the participants in these practices to create social memory and to connect to the larger spatiotemporal order structuring their relations with the world around them
Producing Goods, Shaping People: The Materiality of Crafting
The study of craft production has a long and venerable history in archaeological research on ancient societies. In this chapter, I consider the crafting of useful and desired things from a materiality perspective by looking at the interactions between the craftpersons, the materials with which they work, and the ways that their end products are valued in society. I use two examples: working with fibers by the Maya of Mesoamerica and with metals by the Moche of Andean South America. These are two very different kinds of materials whose characteristics affect how one interacts with them. Crafting was a part of everyday life for the Maya and Moche. Through these two case studies I illustrate the role crafting plays in the development of identities and personhood, in the process contributing to the meaning of everyday life to people in these societies
Household Archaeology and Reconstructing Social Organization in Ancient Complex Societies: A Consideration of Models and Concepts Based on Study of the Prehispanic Maya
Studies of the settlement pattern in the Copan Valley, Honduras, indicate that a House society model provides the best way to understand the social organization of the Late Classic period Maya. The House society model, based on Levi-Strauss\u27s original work but since modified by anthropologists and archaeologists, does not replace household archaeology. Instead, the model allows archaeologists to discuss the continuation of social identity over time
Houses in a Landscape: Memory and Everyday Life in Mesoamerica
In Houses in a Landscape, Julia A. Hendon examines the connections between social identity and social memory using archaeological research on indigenous societies that existed more than one thousand years ago in what is now Honduras. While these societies left behind monumental buildings, the remains of their dead, remnants of their daily life, intricate works of art, and fine examples of craftsmanship such as pottery and stone tools, they left only a small body of written records. Despite this paucity of written information, Hendon contends that an archaeological study of memory in such societies is possible and worthwhile. It is possible because memory is not just a faculty of the individual mind operating in isolation, but a social process embedded in the materiality of human existence. Intimately bound up in the relations people develop with one another and with the world around them through what they do, where and how they do it, and with whom or what, memory leaves material traces.
Hendon conducted research on three contemporaneous Native American civilizations that flourished from the seventh century through the eleventh CE: the Maya kingdom of Copan, the hilltop center of Cerro Palenque, and the dispersed settlement of the Cuyumapa valley. She analyzes domestic life in these societies, from cooking to crafting, as well as public and private ritual events including the ballgame. Combining her findings with a rich body of theory from anthropology, history, and geography, she explores how objectsâthe things people build, make, use, exchange, and discardâhelp people remember. In so doing, she demonstrates how everyday life becomes part of the social processes of remembering and forgetting, and how âmemory communitiesâ assert connections between the past and the present.https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/books/1050/thumbnail.jp
Local Interaction and Long Distance Connections in the Ulua Valley: The View from Cerro Palenque
The site of Cerro Palenque, the largest settlement in the lower Ulua Valley (Sula Valley) in Honduras during the ninth and tenth centuries AD, was a locus of craft production of figurines and pottery, feasting, the ballgame, and other events associated with its ballcourt. Based on the analysis of imported obsidian, the evidence for ritual and craft production, and the layout of the settlement, Cerro Palenque maintained long distance trade connections with Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize. It also took part in local rituals and events with its smaller neighbors in the valley
Julie Hendon, Interim Associate Provost for Academic Technology Initiatives & Faculty Development and Dean of Social Sciences & Interdisciplinary Programs, Director of the Johnson Center for Creative Teaching and Learning, and Professor of Anthropology
In this new Next Page column, Julie Hendon shares how listening to audiobooks has made her more aware of writing quality, her top picks for archaeology-related fiction (hint: two series to add to your must-read list!), and which authors she returns to again and again
A Flexible Corporation: Classic Period House Societies in Eastern Mesoamerica
House society models, based on the work of Levi-Strauss but since refined by cultural anthropologists and archaeologists, provide a good model for understanding social organization among the ancient Maya and their neighbors in Mesoamerica based on a comparative study of societies in the Copan Valley, the lower Ulua Valley (Sula Valley), and the Cuyumapa Valley, all in Honduras. Social Houses are flexible, enduring social groupings that define kinship flexibly, recognizing adoption, marriage, shared residency, and other factors as ways to create ties that endure over generations
Three-electron two-centred bonds and the stabilisation of cationic sulfur radicals
Electronic communication in biological systems is fundamental to understanding protein signalling and electron hopping pathways. Frequently studied examples are cationic radical methionine and its functional derivatives. These systems are understood to be stabilised by a direct âthree-electron two-centredâ bond. We demonstrate for methionine and a series of cationic radical methionine analogues that long-range multi-centred indirect stabilisation occurs, which cannot be attributed to three-electron two-centred interactions. A revised description of the radical stabilisation process is presented, which includes contributions from all atoms with accessible p-orbitals, independent of the distance to the sulfur radical
Relational Identities and Other-Than-Human Agency in Archaeology
Relational Identities and Other-than-Human Agency in Archaeology explores the benefits and consequences of archaeological theorizing on and interpretation of the social agency of nonhumans as relational beings capable of producing change in the world. The volume cross-examines traditional understanding of agency and personhood, presenting a globally diverse set of case studies that cover a range of cultural, geographical, and historical contexts.
Agency (the ability to act) and personhood (the reciprocal qualities of relational beings) have traditionally been strictly assigned to humans. In case studies from Ghana to Australia to the British Isles and Mesoamerica, contributors to this volume demonstrate that objects, animals, locations, and other nonhuman actors also potentially share this ontological status and are capable of instigating events and enacting change. This kind of other-than-human agency is not a one-way transaction of cause to effect but requires an appropriate form of reciprocal engagement indicative of relational personhood, which in these cases, left material traces detectable in the archaeological record.
Modern dualist ontologies separating objects from subjects and the animate from the inanimate obscure our understanding of the roles that other-than-human agents played in past societies. Relational Identities and Other-than-Human Agency in Archaeology challenges this essentialist binary perspective. Contributors in this volume show that intersubjective (inherently social) ways of being are a fundamental and indispensable condition of all personhood and move the debate in posthumanist scholarship beyond the polarizing dichotomies of relational versus bounded types of persons. In this way, the book makes a significant contribution to theory and interpretation of personhood and other-than-human agency in archaeology.https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/books/1141/thumbnail.jp
- âŠ