VISIBILITY, PERCEPTION AND POWER AT THE MARANA PLATFORM MOUND: A SPATIAL ANALYSIS (original) (raw)
Related papers
Into the Earth and Up to the Sky: Hohokam Ritual Architecture (2008).
The Hohokam Millenium, edited by S. Fish and P. Fish, pp. 49-55. School of Advanced Research Press, Santa Fe., 2008
This chapter is part of a School for Advanced Research (SAR) edited volume on the prehistoric Hohokam of southern Arizona (edited by Suzanne and Paul Fish), written for the well-educated public and professional audiences. The Hohokam built two major types of ritual (or monumental) architecture, pre-Classic period ballcourts and Classic period platform mounds. Ballcourts, which likely were the scene of both ballgames and markets, were probably first constructed in the Hohokam area around A.D. 750, and most were abandoned in the short interval between A.D. 1050-1075, which is a time of significant change in Hohokam society (note that a small number of ballcourts in northern Arizona are significantly later and stylistically different than pre-Classic period Hohokam ballcourts and their relationship to the earlier Hohokam courts is unknown -- they are, however, not included in this general discussion). Ballcourts were open features, highly visible, highly accessible, and probably open to all or most community members. They extend down into the earth, or provide a passageway between the surface and subsurface realms -- the subsurface world is a place of origin in many traditional histories. In contrast to ballcourts, platform mounds were closed features with restricted access and may have served as a stage for ritual activities and resource redistribution, although some mounds may have also had elite residential functions. Whether platform mounds were residential, functioning as "homes" for the elite, or whether they were largely vacant ceremonial centers used for ritual purposes, has been the subject of debate in Hohokam archaeology for the past 100 years and will likely continue to be the subject of debate in Hohokam archaeology for the next 100 years. The mounds consisted of rooms on top of an elevated 2-3 m high deliberately-constructed platform, sometimes involving thousands of cubic meters of fill and tens of thousands of person-days in the labor energy needed for construction. These were very ostentatious features that would have been extremely prominent on the flat desert basin landscape (no other Hohokam structure is higher than a single story) and they were clearly constructed to be seen and to convey a powerful message. Classic period platform mounds (to differentiate this form from earlier pre-Classic period "dance" mounds) were initially constructed in the Hohokam area around A.D. 1200 or 1250 and lasted until A.D. 1350-1450 (or possibly as late as 1475-1500), when it becomes difficult to both trace the Hohokam archaeologically and to place them in a secure temporal framework. The mounds almost certainly marked group territory and were symbols of status, with those responsible for directing the construction showing the world that they commanded the power and the surplus food and labor needed to lead their people to create such structures. Interestingly, unlike ballcourts, whose construction and use may be related to the subsurface origin of the people, platform mounds extend into the sky, which cross-cultural ethnographic data suggest is highly status-related, with the higher (or larger) the structure, the higher the status.
Who for Whom? Ritual Architecture in the Light of the related Population
Megaliths and Identities: Early Monuments and Neolithic Societies from the Atlantic to the Baltic, 2011
The meaning behind megalithic collective burial as a token of identity depends on the groups that were likely involved in the erection and use of the burial places. For interpretations of the contemporaneous meaning of these monuments it is necessary to identify the social level on which the graves were salient for identity production. This paper tries to address which segment of the neolithic society erected the megalithic collective burials, which group used them as burial grounds and which group was the recipient of the message if these monuments are understood as an act of communication. Most interpretations equate burial society with settlement society. Other interpretations state that only a certain part of a living society was allowed to be buried in the megalithic graves. Against these models an alternative should be proposed that connects the development of collective burial tradition with a rising complexity of the society. While some of the predictions of this model were tested elsewhere (Hinz 2009), here two aspects will be investigated: Does the buried society in megalithic graves represent a viable population? If so, it is an indication that all members of the society were allowed to be buried inside the tombs. What is the spatial extent that can plausibly be suggested as “catchment area” for the graves? Is it likely on the basis of the distribution of the graves that they represent a settlement unit with each grave functioning as territorial markers? The means of reasoning are general and spatial statistics as well as spatial and agent based simulations. In this way the paper tries to reflect on the character and social significance of the megalithic architecture for the associated population.
Look to the earth: the search for ritual in the context of mound construction
Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences, 2016
In North America mound research traditionally focuses on how these earthen structures functionedas mortuary facilities, ceremonial platforms, observatories, and the residences of political elites and/or ritual practitioners. This paper acknowledges mound building as the purposeful selection of soils and sediments for specific color, texture, or engineering properties and the organization of deposits suggesting that the building process reflects both shared knowledge and communicates specific information. We present two examples: Late Archaic period Poverty Point site Mound A, and Mississippian period Shiloh site Mound A, in the exploration of structured deposits to identify ritual in contrast to a more mundane or purely practical origin. We argue the building of these earthen monuments was not only architecturally important as a means to serve a subsequent purpose but that the act of construction itself was a ritual process intended to serve its own religious and social purposes. In these contexts, ritual does much more than communicate underlying social relationships; it is instrumental to their production.
Dedicated ritual specialists often had indispensable roles in ancient religions and significant impacts on political histories. Few studies have developed methodologies for recovering direct evidence for ritual practitioners in the archaeological record. I argue that the study of religious practitioners must take a holistic micro-scale approach, documenting not only the places where ritual paraphernalia (sacra) were stored, but places where priests and their assistants lived and practiced intimate and communal rituals. I begin with a discussion of ethnohistoric and ethnographic data to model what priests did in ancient societies, and what the material correlates of their dwellings and activities might look like. I then present archaeological data from two late prehistoric house sites identified as priest dwellings from East Polynesian. Utilizing multiple lines of evidence, including portable artifacts, botanical specimens, site architecture, and site distribution patterns, I argue that there is close complementarity between the eth nohistoric–ethnographic model and the archaeological remains. That priests’ houses houses are often situated within corporate ritual centers speaks to the import of such sites and their associated ceremonial activities in the strategic use ideology to institutionalize social hierarchies and political status, a pattern seen in many other ranked societies in Polynesia and other case studies world-wide.
PATTERNING IN PRE-CLASSIC HOHOKAM VILLAGE STRUCTURE: IMPLICATIONS FOR CULTURAL RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
Journal of Arizona Archaeology, 2020
Hohokam settlements of southern and central Arizona have been the focus of nearly 40 years of intensive field investigations and yet there are still major gaps in our knowledge of village structure and organization. New maps of extant Hohokam villages dating from approximately AD 800 to 1050 (including many never previously mapped) are compared to data from villages that have received large-scale excavation to identify commonalities in structure. Structural units consisting of plazas surrounded by suprahousehold groups and their associated cemeteries, refuse deposits, roasting facilities, and ball court(s) are found to be the basic universal social unit which is replicated on larger villages. Some patterning in the specific arrangements of these structural units was identified, as were patterns related to the length of occupation. Findings of the study are considered for their implications in cultural resource management investigations.
University Microfilms, 1996
The function of prehistoric platform mounds in the American Southwest has been a subject of archaeological debate for more than 100 years. Two basic theories, each with several permutations, have been suggested: 1) platform mounds were the residential domains of elite leaders who ruled socially complex groups; or 2) platform mounds were nonresidential ceremonial centers used by groups of low social complexity. These theories have been based primarily on archaeological data because platform mounds were not constructed by any historic period Southwestern group and therefore, unlike the Southeast U.S. and other areas of the world, direct observational data on the function and use of the mounds are lacking. To better understand the nature of these features and the groups that used them, a cross-cultural analysis is undertaken of ethnographic or ethnohistoric platform mound-using groups from the Pacific Ocean region, South America, and the southeastern United States. Ethnographic and ethnohistoric data from nine groups are examined in detail, and common attributes of mound-using groups are abstracted and synthesized. Insights gained through this analysis are then applied to a prehistoric settlement system in the Eastern Tonto Basin of central Arizona. This system was most intensively occupied during the Roosevelt phase (A.D. 1250-1350), when it contained five platform mounds within a 6-km stretch of the Salt River. A new model for Roosevelt phase settlement is presented that suggests that the platform mounds were constructed by competing descent groups. Although the mounds were not residential, the groups that used them were socially complex with well defined, institutionalized leadership. Ethnographic and archaeological data suggest that the mounds played a role in the management of irrigation and other subsistence systems and were used to integrate groups of different enculturative backgrounds, to mark descent group territory, for resource redistribution, and are possibly related to ancestor worship. Significantly, the data also suggest that platform mounds are multifunctional and may not have served the same function even if they are morphologically identical. Functional differences occur both within a settlement system and between settlement systems. Platform mounds are also never abandoned as long as the groups that constructed them maintain control of the original territory, but remain an important part of group traditional history, which includes continued use of the mound area for ritual and other purposes.
JEUNESSE C. (2022) The social context of megalithic practice: an ethnoarchaeological approach. What the case of the Indonesian island of Sumba teaches us, in : L. Laporte, J.-M. Large, L. Nespoulos, C. Scare, Tara Steimer-Herbet (eds.), Megaliths of the world, Archaeopress, Oxford 2022, 341-363. The island of Sumba (Indonesia) is the last place in the world were people still use to build megalithic graves. The island shows a quite homogenous traditional material culture, but two clearly differentiated socio-political systems: on one hand segmented egalitarian tribe-like societies, on the other stratified chiefdoms, which both built megalithic tombs. It is thus an ideal spot to study the social and political backgrounds of the megalithic practice. Each of the two types of societies has its own way to deal with megaliths : small or medium-sized, poorly decorated monuments sheltering a funeral population including several generations in the egalitarian version, a larger variability of sizes and the presence of monumental, richly decorated “royal” dolmens with few deceased (often only the royal couple) in the stratified one. The examination of current changes, which tend to attenuate differences while at the same time creating conditions favourable to the emergence of new cleavages, offers us a valuable opportunity to observe 'live' how a megalithic system - since the construction of megalithic tombs remains a privileged medium for the expression of identities - adapts to changing social and political conditions. Once the "Sumbanese" model characterised, we attempt to show how it is likely to refine our view of European Neolithic megalithic practices, notably by encouraging the development of new research projects inspired by the data provided by social anthropology.