Untitled Flashcards Set
Ancestral Pueblo (social and political complexity):
Apartment complex like settlements
Most famous site is Pueblo Capito in Chaco Canyon
Bunch of social complexity characteristics but it dosent have centralized authority or centralized political control
Types of social complexity are Chaco Roads so trade networks and transportation
Trade networks extending to Mexico, such as in the California areas of the Pacific including conch shells.
Monumental architecture in the form of Pueblos
Evidence of social hierarchy, as status is inherited from the maternal line
Pueblo l-lll, 750 – 1300 CE
Aztec (social and political complexity):
A late post classic empire from 1325 to about 1521 is the height of their power.
They are Mexica or Nahuatl speakers
Aztec Empire’s capital is at Tenochtitlan
Huge tribute networks, complex social hierarchies, market economies
Rise of the Aztec:
Middle Postclassic development of city states in Basin of Mexico
Mexica of Tenochtitlan/Tlatelolco had a relatively low-level position in the confederation of city-states.
By CE 1428 form Triple Alliance with other powers – Texcoco and Tlatelolco
Postclassic takeover (CE 1473) of the confederation by the Mexica and their allies and expansion to a complex tribute-extraction system that reached coast to coast.
Language = Nahuatl (Lingua franca of an empire
Cahokia (social and political complexity):
Is a chiefdom associated with the Mississippian culture, located in modern day Illinois
Cahokia is a city with populations of 50,000 people with centralization of authority
Paramount chief who is buried at Mound 72
Monumental architecture that is amongst Mound
Astronomical observation because the entirety of Cahokia is aligned to measure the movements of the sun and the moon, and we even have something called the moon edge.
1050-1250 CE
Densely occupied. Sedentary village
Maize agriculture + productive ox-bow lake
Central site of a chiefdom
The site of Cahokia grew so large and complex that some have argued that it should be considered a city.
Chaco phenomenon:
Associated with Ancestral Pueblo
Local to Chaco Canyon in New Mexico
CE 900 – 1220
Great houses
Communal masonry
Small-scale canals
Drought around 1130 CE and a shift of power towards the San Juan Region contributed to Chaco’s lessening importance
Cultural heritage:
The shared sense of history related to a certain group that includes tangible and intangible items and practices
Things you can touch, and ideas, stories, practices that dont take a formal form necessarily
This notion of property in the Western tradition does not do a good job of disccusing cultural heritage because cultural heritage is not always alienable meaning people dont have the power to buy and sell it.
Some of its inalienable meaning it belongs to everyone so no one person or generation has the right to give it up or sell it
A generational inheritance, a legacy inherited from past generations
Tangible v. Intangible
Object-based v. Practice-based
A poltical process
“Heritage” claim
Preservation
Stewardship
Dendrochronology:
Using tree ring dating using climatically sensitive trees and climatic fluctuations in order to date when a tree was cut down
Related to dendroclimatology so you can use tree rings to reconstruct time periods and chronology as well as past climate events.
Four Corners of the Maya World:
Classic Period: CE 250-900
Palenque, Tikal, Calakmul, and Copan
Glyphs:
The type of Mayan writing
Hohokam:
A contemporary culture to Ancestral Puebla, but in the more arid and desert regions of Arizona, its most famous site is Snake Town.
Snake Town has a population of over a thousand people
Irrigation agriculture and irrigation canals stretched for miles
200 – 1450 CE
Snaketown
Mesoamerican ball court?
Hopewell Culture (+ Interaction Sphere):
100 BCE – 400 CE
Earthen mounds, copper falcon effigy, copper adze, mica effigies
The Hopewell culture in the Ohio River Valley would create sedentary villages that demonstrated many social complexity characteristics even without subsistence-level farming and the organization into chiefdoms.
The Hopewell Interaction Sphere can be considered more than regional trade and exchange network, reaching across the continent. It is through this network that maize begins to enter into eastern North America.
Huaca del Sol and Huaca de la Luna:
Pyramids associated with the South American Moche culture
Huaca is from the Quechua word. Quechua being the local language is also the langauage of the Inca Empire.
Huaca means sacred so sacred place is what theyre being called
Huaca del Sol and Huaca not only are they monumental, they have really interesting things happening on their mud bricks because they’re stamped with symbols. These symbols are proof of extraction of labor.
Iconography:
Study of art, looking at symbols and motifs to extract meanng.
Pakal and Ployke. Pakal’s sarcophagus, he descends into the underworld and is eaten by this underworld monster and a world tree grows out of him. It's an image communicating the divine king. The idea that Pakal himself has been deified.
Inca:
An empire in South America based in Cusco.
1438 – 1533
Expansive territory
Military expansion
Multi-ethnic
The Inca (1438 – 1533) built an empire that would span Ecuador to Chile, including both the Pacific coast and the Andes.
Machu Picchu:
Famous royal retreat at Machu Picchu
The Inca emperor has a genotype of divine flesha because he’s descended from the sun god.
Maize agriculture:
Food triad: Maize, squash, beans
Mass production (+ centralized production):
Form of centralized production, where one group of people or one place becomes responsible for producing so many goods that they become widely distributed.
Heres the theater type incense burners, thin orange ceramics, pachuca obsidian.
Maya (social and political complexity):
Classic Period: CE 250-900
Series of culturally and ethnically related, but competing independent polities
Mesoamerica (define, societies):
Central Mexico through parts of El Salvador includes the Zapotec, it includes the Bayo, it includes the Olmec, it includes the Aztec, it includes Teotihuacan.
Those were the different cultures and these are different peoples with different languages, different ethnicities, belonging to different political entities.
Fear of historical connection
Passed on some shared cultural attributes, value of the color green, monumental architecture or surrounding a essential plaza, their system of calendars, the use of gl writing.
All very different people, but there is some aspects of their culture that are shared, or some aspects of their history.
The term ‘Mesoamerica’ like the term ‘Western civilization’ suggests the existence of various kinds of historical connections among a set of interacting societies that led to shared values, practices, and institutions...” (Joyce 2004)
Cultural Traits: Maize, beans and squash agriculture, Ball courts, Hieroglyphic and other complex graphic systems (appear on stela and in codices), Positional numeral system, Codices: screen fold, bark paper manuscripts, Similar belief systems and ideology, Traditions of human sacrifice and auto sacrifice, Monumental Centers w/ Stepped pyramids, 260-day ritual calendar, and in most places, a 365-day solar calendar, Green stone objects highly valued, Ornate feather work, Use of cacao as important elite item and money.
Formative, or Preclassic Period: 2000 BCE – CE 250
Classic Period: CE 250 – 900
Postclassic Period: CE 900 – conquest (1521)
The first states in Mesoamerica begin to emerge in Central Mexico, including both the Zapotec and Teotihuacan. Both show clear evidence of social hierarchies, regional settlement with a site hierarchy, monumental architecture, and conquest of other areas.
Mexica:
The ethnic group of the Aztec, and that is why Mexico is called Mexico.
Aztec ethnic group which settled the islands of Tenochtitlan and Tlatelolco. Ruled from Tenochtitlan (Mexico City) and reached such dominance by the time the Spaniards arrived in 1519, that the capital and nation name of Mexico was eventually deruved from their name.
Aztec were foreigners in the region!
Mississippian culture:
Later Eastern Woodlands culture comprised of several chiefdoms that were independent from each other.
Cahokia is one Mississippian chiefdom that lasts for about 200 years
900- 1600 CE
The Missippian culture was supported by sedentary maize agriculture and led to the rise of chiefdoms in the eastern United States.
Mit’a:
A means of tribute in prehispanic Andean South America that involved the use of conscripted laborers to complete discrete organizational tasks (Price and Feinman)
Mitmaq:
A system of colonization used by the Inca to minimize provincal rebellion by moving people around (Price and Feinman)
Moche (social and political complexity):
Another South American polity, theyre a state level society
Predate the Inka and are located between the coastal and Andes region. This is where you have Huaca del Sol and Huaca de la Luna.
They are states with their craft specialization. They have a noble class who is signaled if they get to have things like copper. Emphasis on gold.
Sacrifice, the most important was this idea that extraction of labor was already in practice well before we have the rise of empires. Moche are one example, because of those stamped letterings.
Monte Alban:
Zapotec city
Becomes the capital city of a Zapotec state. Zapotec is the people, Monte Alban is the city.
Population about 17,000 people and it rules over all of Taocon Valley.
Conquers other communities. Place glyphs on building J that say, We conquered these people. They are now part of our state. You can reconstruct the borders of this polity using glyphs located on Building J.
Gains dominance over region beginning 500 to 300 BCE
-Urbanization
-Satellite
-Communities
200 BCE to 200 CE expands influence beyond Valley of Oaxaca
Population Size: 17,000
Myth of the Moundbuilders:
Various mound builders in the eastern woodlands, inlcuing the Hopewell culture, including the Mississippian culture, which includes Cahokia.
Colonial narrative that says there no way in hell that the local people built this.
Something must have happened to the buidlers of these mounds, and the local people are some sort of invaders who displaced them. This is myth and its wrong. All of this was built by local people.
They are not from Aztec, they’re not from Vikings, or they’re none of these different things that have found their way into colonial history.
Mortuary monuments at Mound City Group
NAGPRA:
Federal act passed in the US in 19 or 1890 that was meant to give a little bit more say to descendant communities and create a process through which they’re consulted and create a process through sacred objects and human ancestors could be repatriated or returned to them.
Severly unperfect
Kennewick Man when discovered was not repatriated immediately because the descendant communities could not prove cultural affilaiton. Genes DNA was used to say he is related to the local tribes that tried to claim him but getting that evidence required decimiation. Creation of those human remains based on the descendant communtiies rule, religious beliefs. Was returned but not without a lot of heartache.
For the descendant communities the EC are Meso American chiefdom in the formative period. They predate much of whats happening with the Mayan ZEC and overlap with them.
Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act
Establishes right to repatriation
Establish responsibility to notify, report, and consult
To whom?
“Cultural affiliation” means there is a relationship of shared group identity which can be reasonbly traced historically or prehistorically between a present day Indian tribe or Native Hawaiian organization and an identifiable earlier group (25 U.S.C. 3001 Sec.2 (2)).
Olmec:
Famous for their series of chiefdoms as well as things like the Colossal Assault Heads.
Representations of individual chiefs. First representations of jaguars. The value of the color green as seen in the jaguar mosaic. The use of monumental architecture including pyramidal mounds theres some of those foundations of what it means to be Mesoamerican here.
Mesoamerican firsts but their material signature or their kind of claim to fame being those colossal basalt heads.
1500 to 400 BCE
Horizon: A widely distributed set of cultural traits and artifact assemblages
The Olmec horizon is a widely distributed set of cultural traits and artifact assemblages that first emerges in the chiefdoms of the Gulf Lowlands.
San Lorenzo (1500 – 900 BCE):
Oldest Olmec site
Pottery found from earliest period
Monumental sculptures not until 1250 BCE
All monoliths intentionally mutilated or buried
Pakal:
King of the Palenque
Responsible for the fluorescence of Palenque into a great regional power
The one who is buried in the Temple of Inscriptions that was purposely built so that his tomb was connected to the temple up top through a pipeline suggesting continuing connections with Pakal, continuing worship.
The iconography from the temple and the lid of the sarcophagus is evidence of this idea of divine kingship associated with our Maya kings.
615 – 683 CE
World tree, Pakal, Monster of the Underworld
Palenque:
Growth and expansion late classic
Pochteca:
Evidence of the complex social structures of the Aztec with the really rigid stratification system. WE have kings, we have nobles, we have warriors.
Pochteca is a professional warrior, professional merchant class.
Theyre traveling from town to town to facilitate the movemnts of goods and sometimes to facilitate the incorporation of different polities into the tribute system. Able to travel so widely and successfully because of the Aztec language, Nahuatl, becoming the lingua franca, the shared language for diplomatic and economic activities for the region.
Eagle & Jaguar Warrior
Professional Warrior Class
Social mobility
Sumptuary Laws
Hypergyny
Poverty Point (social and political complexity):
A late archaic early woodland site in Louisana that shows social compelxity and long term effects.
The first local hunter gatherers. They build monumental architecture. Site with the earthen ridges leading to mound which is a pyramidal mound about 17 feet high. The whole kind of play, layout, actually is a tool for astronomical observation, aliging, with the rising sun during solstice.
Late Archaic to Early Woodland (c. 1700-1100 BCE)
Monumental construction
Astronomical observation
Imported chert, trade and exchange, local clay objects, and imported soapstone bowls
Pueblo Bonito:
A large site in New Mexico in Chaco Canyon that was at the center of the Chaco Roads, the train networks.
Massive pueblo that was four stories tall and its here at Room 33 that we show that there is social inequalities that are inherited through the mothers line.
Largest of the Great Houses (650 rooms and 4-5 stories tall)
850s CE initial construction
Surge in activity 1030 – 1079 CE
Quechua:
Inca langauage and it is the language of the empire. Another lingua franca kipu.
Quipu:
One of the only empires in the world that dosent have writing. They have a sytem of record keeping which is Quipu.
Quipu is an accounting and reporting system using string thats based on color, number of knots.
Communicating information that could be read by specialists.
Sapa Inca:
Emperor of Inca Empire.
Another type of divine king who traces his lineage to the sun god.
Snaketown (social and political complexity):
Mentioned earlier
Social complexity (definitions, characteristics):
Sedentism, high population density, domestication (agriculture and pastoralism), storage, craft specialization, metallurgy, monumental architecture, writing, reltion and religous specialists, calendars and astronomical observation, transportation networks and roads, trade and exchange networks, luxury and exotic goods, social hierarchy, centralization, and Armed military force
State (definition, characteristics, examples):
Densely populated political entities.
Have at least three administrative levels, meaning you have a capital ruling over other cities, which rule over villages, which rule over farmland.
Innately, highly stratified. They involve the incorporation of other communities under power, and it also has a system of centralized power, where a king or a ruling class has the right ot enact and enfore laws to run the military.
Stone Masonry:
Really cool architectual work that is famous in the Andes area among people like the Inca.
Theyre not using mortar. You can still see the adjoining stones at Cusco, which was the capital of the Inca Empire.
Sumptuary laws (definition, examples):
Regulations that constrict the consumption, meaning use, buying, imbibing of certain materials or goods to a specific social class.
The Aztec have Sumptuary Laws which are being good at battle, being a good lawyer, being good at battle, being a good lawyer means you can earn the right to drink a certain type of alcohol to wear a con.
Given a degree of social mobility if you’re a warrior. You can move up to a lower noble class and you gain the right to marry noble women.
Temple of Inscriptions:
Mentioned earlier
Temple of the Feathered Serpent:
One of the most famous pyramids at Teotihuacan.
Shows those material signatures that weve come used to as being indications of Teotihuacan influence. Some of that is our tumultuous influence.
Quetzalcoatl, the feathered serpent.
Tlaloc, the rain god.
Human Sacrifice
Features of building include a figure with resemblance of Tlaloc god to Jaguar in Olmec art (Goggle eyes) and Feathered Serpent (Quetzalcoatl)
Tenochtitlan:
The Aztec capital.
Impressive size of 200,00 people and not only that it had a centralized market at Tlaxaloco, its sister city. But also the fact that we have this engineering that manipulates and contrls the flow of water to do rasied field agriculture, to seperate fresh water from not fresh water and to control annual flooding so that the city dosent flood.
CE 1325 – 1521
Population: 200,000
Canals and Chinampas
Teotihuacan (social and political complexity):
Large central Mexican state that shows incursions into other areas of Mesoamerica including the Maya world.
This is the West that gets referred to in Maya texts.
300 BCE – 750 CE
Why settle here?
Caves which are related to religion and mythology
Humans, sun and moon came from center of the earth.
Entrance to the Underworld.
Network of caves and tunnels under the Pyramids of the Sun and the Moon
Close obsidian resources
Nearby springs for irrigation
Teotihuacano incursions:
Toulouse Blair Architecture, Centralized Authority, Temple of the Feathered Serpent, etc.
Tikal:
Four corners of the Maya world.
The most politically powerful, most powerful for the longest time. Its characterized by that hisotry of the arrival of strangers.
This westward smoking frog coming in and displacing Jaguar Claw, local king.
Prominence: CE 250-900
UNESCO:
United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization.
The institurion that tries to maintaiin world peace through cultural sharing and collaboration, which means they’re also the ones responsible for creating conventions or international law that regulates and preserves cultural heritage on the global stage.
Founded at the same time as the UN post World War ll.
Constitution of UNESCO
Article 1: “The purpose of the Organization is to contribute to peace and security by promoting collaboration among the nations through education, science, and culture in order to further universal respect for justice, for the rule of law and for the human rights and fundamental freedoms which are affirmed for the peoples of the world without distinction of race, sex, language or religion, by the Charter of the United Nations.”
Conserve and preserve
Create legal instruments
Encourage international exchange
Zapotec (social and political complexity):
Mentioned earlier
The Valley of Oaxaca
Formative Period = regional power and chiefdom
Classic Period = rise of a state
Co-exists with the Olmec, Teotihuacan, and Maya