Wendy Ashmore
Biographic Data
| ID | 112938 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Wendy Ashmore |
| GIVEN NAMES | Wendy |
| FAMILY NAME | Ashmore |
| SIGNATURE | ASHMORE W |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of California, Riverside |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 40 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 724 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 38 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1979 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2020 |
| H-INDEX | 12 |
Patterson, Thomas Carl
Kent, Susan
Why the Archaeology of Political Ecology Matters
Archaeology and anthropology generally share with geography an interest in the relationship of humans to their environments. This relationship involves material exchanges but also draws from social relations as well as political, symbolic, and religious practices. Thus, while climate and natural resources shape human biology and culture over time, human culture and politics have reciprocal impacts on the environment, cross-culturally and across t…
Lived Experiences of Space, Time and Cosmovision
Essays in this Special Section highlight varied and convergent North, Central and South American expressions of knowledge and belief about time, space, and cosmovision, especially as manifest in lived experience inflected by politico-economic circumstance
Contingent Acts of Remembrance: Royal Ancestors of Classic Maya Copan and Quirigua
Classic Maya history is deeply political, and religious and political activities frequently inseparable. This essay advocates directly comparing mortuary practices over time for rulers at politically and economically linked centers. Most specifically it outlines an experimental model of how acts of remembrance in royal ancestor veneration articulate with local and regional politico-economic dynamics, and to do so with respect to acts attested in …
What Were Ancient Maya Landscapes Really Like
Landscapes are undeniably among the liveliest, most enduring, and well-grounded topics in studies of the ancient Maya. This article explores how geographers, anthropologists, archaeologists, epigraphers, artists, art historians, and other outside observers, together with indigenous Maya, have shaped our thinking about landscapes. In what follows, I discuss ecological, economic, political, social, and ideational aspects of ancient Maya landscapes,…
History, networks, and the quest for power: Ancient political competition in the Lower Motagua Valley, Guatemala
Capturing the fluid, dynamic interactions that constitute political form and change is best accomplished by adopting a network perspective. This approach calls attention to how power contests are waged close to the ground by self-reflexive agents who co-operate within wider webs to mobilize material and conceptual resources in support of common political projects. Political contests are, thus, waged within networks of networks in which decisions …
Voices in American Archaeology
Voices in American Archaeology
Mesoamerican Landscape Archaeologies
Landscapes figure centrally in conceptions and writings about ancient Mesoamerica. This selective review considers four interrelated kinds of landscapes investigated archaeologically in Mesoamerica: ecology and land use, social history, ritual expression, and cosmologic meaning. The literature on each topic is large, and from its inception, Ancient Mesoamerica has contributed significantly. Discussion here focuses on how we got to where we are in…
Social Archaeologies of Landscape
Susan Kent: A Life and a Legacy
Pine, prestige and politics of the Late Classic Maya at Xunantunich, Belize
Comparing the source of a commodity with the social levels of the people amongst whom it is found can reveal important aspects of social structure. This case study of a Maya community, using archaeological and ethnographic data, shows that pine and pine charcoal was procured at a distance and distributed unevenly in settlements. The researchers deduce that this commodity was not freely available in the market place, but was subject to political c…
Susan Kent (1952-2003)
Aspects of Maya Settlement Archaeology, 1999
Interpreting Ancient Maya Civic Plans: Reply to Smith
In response to Smith’s critique, we situate our work within the scientific method. We review how our hypotheses arose, how and by whom they have been tested, and with what results. Like Smith, we focus on whether Maya civic centers include emphatic expression of a north-south axis, and on the inference of a partially cosmological basis of Maya axial orders. We indicate sources of our inferences and review explicitly the criteria that Smith faults…
Dating the Rise and Fall of Xunantunich, Belize: A Late and Terminal Classic Lowland Maya Regional Center
This article presents the chronological framework used to reconstruct the political history of the ancient Lowland Maya site of Xunantunich in the upper Belize River valley. Extensive excavations from 1991 to 1997 by the Xunantunich Archaeological Project produced the ceramic, architectural, and epigraphic data needed to place the site within a temporal context. Refinement of the Barton Ramie ceramic chronology was the first step toward clarifyin…
Spatial Orders in Maya Civic Plans
Ancient civic centers materialize ideas of proper spatial organization, among the Maya as in other societies. We argue that the position and arrangement of ancient Maya buildings and arenas emphatically express statements about cosmology and political order. At the same time, the clarity of original spatial expression is often blurred in the sites we observe archaeologically. Factors responsible for such blurring include multiple other influences…
Decisions and Dispositions: Socializing Spatial Archaeology
Concerns with spatial dimensions and social inference have long histories in archaeology. However, the two histories are not always conjoined. This article considers changing understandings of space in archaeology in the last half century, and the variable nature of what "social" has denoted and connoted during that same span. The review highlights recurring calls for a social archaeology, and the degree to which, in such instances, social infere…
An Aspect of Archaeology's Recent Past and Its Relevance in the New Millennium
Setting the Record Straight on AA
The Limits of Settlement Growth: A Theoretical Outline . By Roland Fletcher
[Comments and Replies]
Olivier de Montmollin. Settlement and politics in three Classic Maya polities. (Monographs in World Archaeology 24.) xviii+369 pages, 107 figures, 64 tables. 1995. Madison (WI): Prehistory Press; 1-88…
Olivier de Montmollin. Settlement and politics in three Classic Maya polities. (Monographs in World Archaeology 24.) xviii+369 pages, 107 figures, 64 tables. 1995. Madison (WI): Prehistory Press; 1-881094-13-8 paperback $ 50. - Volume 70 Issue 270
Playing with Power: Ballcourts and Political Ritual in Southern Mesoamerica [and Comments and Reply]
Factional Competition and Political Development in the New World
Factionalism is an important force of social transformation, and this volume examines how factional competition in the kinship and political structures in ancient New World societies led to the development of chiefdoms, states and empires. The case studies, from a range of New World societies, represent all levels of non-egalitarian societies and a wide variety of ecological settings in the New World. They document the effects of factionalism on …
Site-Planning Principles and Concepts of Directionality among the Ancient Maya
Many societies use architecture for symbolic expression, and often buildings or other constructions constitute maps of a culture's worldview. Archaeological identification of such ideational expressions is receiving renewed attention, in the Maya area as in many other regions. Excavations in 1988-1989 in Groups 8L-10 through 8L-12, Copán, Honduras, were designed to examine a particular model of ancient Maya site planning and spatial organization,…
Spatial Orders in Maya Civic Plans
Ancient civic centers materialize ideas of proper spatial organization, among the Maya as in other societies. We argue that the position and arrangement of ancient Maya buildings and arenas emphatically express statements about cosmology and political order. At the same time, the clarity of original spatial expression is often blurred in the sites we observe archaeologically. Factors responsible for such blurring include multiple other influences…
Decisions and Dispositions: Socializing Spatial Archaeology
Concerns with spatial dimensions and social inference have long histories in archaeology. However, the two histories are not always conjoined. This article considers changing understandings of space in archaeology in the last half century, and the variable nature of what "social" has denoted and connoted during that same span. The review highlights recurring calls for a social archaeology, and the degree to which, in such instances, social infere…
Lowland Maya settlement patterns
Playing with Power: Ballcourts and Political Ritual in Southern Mesoamerica [and Comments and Reply]
Dating the Rise and Fall of Xunantunich, Belize: A Late and Terminal Classic Lowland Maya Regional Center
This article presents the chronological framework used to reconstruct the political history of the ancient Lowland Maya site of Xunantunich in the upper Belize River valley. Extensive excavations from 1991 to 1997 by the Xunantunich Archaeological Project produced the ceramic, architectural, and epigraphic data needed to place the site within a temporal context. Refinement of the Barton Ramie ceramic chronology was the first step toward clarifyin…
History, networks, and the quest for power: Ancient political competition in the Lower Motagua Valley, Guatemala
Capturing the fluid, dynamic interactions that constitute political form and change is best accomplished by adopting a network perspective. This approach calls attention to how power contests are waged close to the ground by self-reflexive agents who co-operate within wider webs to mobilize material and conceptual resources in support of common political projects. Political contests are, thus, waged within networks of networks in which decisions …
Quirigua Archaeology and History Revisited
After 1977, archaeological field research at Quirigua, Guatemala, was to have constituted primarily finishing touches for programs nearly completed in prior seasons. Instead, the unanticipated solution of what had been an enduring data-collection problem provided a wealth of new information that has substantially broadened knowledge of the nature and development of this Classic Maya center. The article presented here outlines the new findings, in…
Interpreting Ancient Maya Civic Plans: Reply to Smith
In response to Smith’s critique, we situate our work within the scientific method. We review how our hypotheses arose, how and by whom they have been tested, and with what results. Like Smith, we focus on whether Maya civic centers include emphatic expression of a north-south axis, and on the inference of a partially cosmological basis of Maya axial orders. We indicate sources of our inferences and review explicitly the criteria that Smith faults…
Mesoamerican Landscape Archaeologies
Landscapes figure centrally in conceptions and writings about ancient Mesoamerica. This selective review considers four interrelated kinds of landscapes investigated archaeologically in Mesoamerica: ecology and land use, social history, ritual expression, and cosmologic meaning. The literature on each topic is large, and from its inception, Ancient Mesoamerica has contributed significantly. Discussion here focuses on how we got to where we are in…
The Late Postclassic Eastern Frontier of Mesoamerica: Cultural Innovation Along the Periphery [and Comments and Replies]
A far-reaching frontier culture area emerged along the eastern periphery of southern Mesoamerica during the Late Postclassic. Here linguistically diverse peoples (e.g., Rabinal, Pokom, Akahal, Xinca) shared a pattern in material culture. With the frontier commencing along the borders of the Quinche and Cakchiquel conquest states, it is theorized that a principal variable in the development of the frontier cultural pattern was militaristic expansi…
Pine, prestige and politics of the Late Classic Maya at Xunantunich, Belize
Comparing the source of a commodity with the social levels of the people amongst whom it is found can reveal important aspects of social structure. This case study of a Maya community, using archaeological and ethnographic data, shows that pine and pine charcoal was procured at a distance and distributed unevenly in settlements. The researchers deduce that this commodity was not freely available in the market place, but was subject to political c…
Interregional Interaction in the SE Maya Periphery: The Santa Barbara Archaeological Project 1983–1984 Seasons
Archaeological study of the SE Maya Periphery has lagged considerably behind research in other portions of Meseoamerica, resulting in a dearth of time-space systematics for this extensive zone. In addition, the examination of prehistoric interaction networks encompassing state and non-state level societies and their mutual effects has not received much scholarly attention. These join practical and theoretical concerns have been addressed by the 1…
Classic Maya Wells at Quiriguá, Guatemala: Household Facilities in a Water-Rich Setting
Studies of ancient Maya water management tend to emphasize consideration of features related either to agriculture or to the provision of communal water supplies in water-poor settings. Ceramic-lined wells in eighth-century Quiriguá, however, constituted household facilities of standardized form, distributed widely in a community where water supplies were always readily available. These wells both expand our knowledge of specialized Maya hydrauli…
What Were Ancient Maya Landscapes Really Like
Landscapes are undeniably among the liveliest, most enduring, and well-grounded topics in studies of the ancient Maya. This article explores how geographers, anthropologists, archaeologists, epigraphers, artists, art historians, and other outside observers, together with indigenous Maya, have shaped our thinking about landscapes. In what follows, I discuss ecological, economic, political, social, and ideational aspects of ancient Maya landscapes,…
Why the Archaeology of Political Ecology Matters
Archaeology and anthropology generally share with geography an interest in the relationship of humans to their environments. This relationship involves material exchanges but also draws from social relations as well as political, symbolic, and religious practices. Thus, while climate and natural resources shape human biology and culture over time, human culture and politics have reciprocal impacts on the environment, cross-culturally and across t…
Contingent Acts of Remembrance: Royal Ancestors of Classic Maya Copan and Quirigua
Classic Maya history is deeply political, and religious and political activities frequently inseparable. This essay advocates directly comparing mortuary practices over time for rulers at politically and economically linked centers. Most specifically it outlines an experimental model of how acts of remembrance in royal ancestor veneration articulate with local and regional politico-economic dynamics, and to do so with respect to acts attested in …
Lived Experiences of Space, Time and Cosmovision
Essays in this Special Section highlight varied and convergent North, Central and South American expressions of knowledge and belief about time, space, and cosmovision, especially as manifest in lived experience inflected by politico-economic circumstance
Susan Kent: A Life and a Legacy
Susan Kent (1952-2003)
Setting the Record Straight on AA
Interregional Interaction in the SE Maya Periphery: The Santa Barbara Archaeological Project 1983-1984 Seasons
Edward Schortman, Patricia Urban, Wendy Ashmore, Julie Benyo, Interregional Interaction in the SE Maya Periphery: The Santa Barbara Archaeological Project 1983-1984 Seasons, Journal of Field Archaeology, Vol. 13, No. 3 (Autumn, 1986), pp. 259-272
Fundamentals of Archaeology
Lowland Maya settlement patterns
The Late Postclassic Eastern Frontier of Mesoamerica: Cultural Innovation Along the Periphery [and Comments and Replies]
A far-reaching frontier culture area emerged along the eastern periphery of southern Mesoamerica during the Late Postclassic. Here linguistically diverse peoples (e.g., Rabinal, Pokom, Akahal, Xinca) shared a pattern in material culture. With the frontier commencing along the borders of the Quinche and Cakchiquel conquest states, it is theorized that a principal variable in the development of the frontier cultural pattern was militaristic expansi…
Discovering the Moche . 1979. A film by Christopher B. Donnan, Richard Cowan , and William B Lee
Quirigua Archaeology and History Revisited
After 1977, archaeological field research at Quirigua, Guatemala, was to have constituted primarily finishing touches for programs nearly completed in prior seasons. Instead, the unanticipated solution of what had been an enduring data-collection problem provided a wealth of new information that has substantially broadened knowledge of the nature and development of this Classic Maya center. The article presented here outlines the new findings, in…
Classic Maya Wells at Quiriguá, Guatemala: Household Facilities in a Water-Rich Setting
Studies of ancient Maya water management tend to emphasize consideration of features related either to agriculture or to the provision of communal water supplies in water-poor settings. Ceramic-lined wells in eighth-century Quiriguá, however, constituted household facilities of standardized form, distributed widely in a community where water supplies were always readily available. These wells both expand our knowledge of specialized Maya hydrauli…
The Sun Kingdom of Yucatan. 1984. Produced by Hugh Johnsto . and Suzanne Johnston
Interregional Interaction in the SE Maya Periphery: The Santa Barbara Archaeological Project 1983-1984 Seasons
Edward Schortman, Patricia Urban, Wendy Ashmore, Julie Benyo, Interregional Interaction in the SE Maya Periphery: The Santa Barbara Archaeological Project 1983-1984 Seasons, Journal of Field Archaeology, Vol. 13, No. 3 (Autumn, 1986), pp. 259-272
Interregional Interaction in the SE Maya Periphery: The Santa Barbara Archaeological Project 1983–1984 Seasons
Archaeological study of the SE Maya Periphery has lagged considerably behind research in other portions of Meseoamerica, resulting in a dearth of time-space systematics for this extensive zone. In addition, the examination of prehistoric interaction networks encompassing state and non-state level societies and their mutual effects has not received much scholarly attention. These join practical and theoretical concerns have been addressed by the 1…
Archeology Section
Maya Postclassic State Formation: Segmentary Lineage Migration in Advancing Frontiers
Site-Planning Principles and Concepts of Directionality among the Ancient Maya
Many societies use architecture for symbolic expression, and often buildings or other constructions constitute maps of a culture's worldview. Archaeological identification of such ideational expressions is receiving renewed attention, in the Maya area as in many other regions. Excavations in 1988-1989 in Groups 8L-10 through 8L-12, Copán, Honduras, were designed to examine a particular model of ancient Maya site planning and spatial organization,…
Archeology: Scribes, Warriors and Kings: The City of Copán and the Ancient Maya . William L. Fash. New Aspects of Antiquity ( Colin Renfrew , general ed.)
The Theme Is Variation: Recent Publications on the Archaeology of Southern Mesoamerica
Variability is a word used frequently in archaeology these days. The
Factional Competition and Political Development in the New World
Factionalism is an important force of social transformation, and this volume examines how factional competition in the kinship and political structures in ancient New World societies led to the development of chiefdoms, states and empires. The case studies, from a range of New World societies, represent all levels of non-egalitarian societies and a wide variety of ecological settings in the New World. They document the effects of factionalism on …
[Comments and Replies]
Olivier de Montmollin. Settlement and politics in three Classic Maya polities. (Monographs in World Archaeology 24.) xviii+369 pages, 107 figures, 64 tables. 1995. Madison (WI): Prehistory Press; 1-88…
Olivier de Montmollin. Settlement and politics in three Classic Maya polities. (Monographs in World Archaeology 24.) xviii+369 pages, 107 figures, 64 tables. 1995. Madison (WI): Prehistory Press; 1-881094-13-8 paperback $ 50. - Volume 70 Issue 270
Playing with Power: Ballcourts and Political Ritual in Southern Mesoamerica [and Comments and Reply]
The Limits of Settlement Growth: A Theoretical Outline . By Roland Fletcher
An Aspect of Archaeology's Recent Past and Its Relevance in the New Millennium
Setting the Record Straight on AA
Dating the Rise and Fall of Xunantunich, Belize: A Late and Terminal Classic Lowland Maya Regional Center
This article presents the chronological framework used to reconstruct the political history of the ancient Lowland Maya site of Xunantunich in the upper Belize River valley. Extensive excavations from 1991 to 1997 by the Xunantunich Archaeological Project produced the ceramic, architectural, and epigraphic data needed to place the site within a temporal context. Refinement of the Barton Ramie ceramic chronology was the first step toward clarifyin…
Spatial Orders in Maya Civic Plans
Ancient civic centers materialize ideas of proper spatial organization, among the Maya as in other societies. We argue that the position and arrangement of ancient Maya buildings and arenas emphatically express statements about cosmology and political order. At the same time, the clarity of original spatial expression is often blurred in the sites we observe archaeologically. Factors responsible for such blurring include multiple other influences…
Decisions and Dispositions: Socializing Spatial Archaeology
Concerns with spatial dimensions and social inference have long histories in archaeology. However, the two histories are not always conjoined. This article considers changing understandings of space in archaeology in the last half century, and the variable nature of what "social" has denoted and connoted during that same span. The review highlights recurring calls for a social archaeology, and the degree to which, in such instances, social infere…
Aspects of Maya Settlement Archaeology, 1999
Archaeology (25 works) · History (24 works) · Archaeology and ancient environmental studies (18 works) · Sociology (17 works) · Computer Science (15 works) · Geography (15 works) · Maya (15 works) · Latin American history and culture (14 works) · Political science (13 works) · Politics (13 works)