<p> Land and water use at archaeological sites is a growing field of study within Mesoamerican archaeology. In Mesoamerica, similar to elsewhere in the world, landscapes were settled based partially upon the characteristics of the environment and the types of food and water resources available. Across Mesoamerica, landscape concepts were also important to religious beliefs and ritual activity in a manner that may have had the potential to influence the power dynamics of a site. This thesis focuses on the management of water at the site of Takalik Abaj in Guatemala during the Middle to Late Preclassic periods (c. 1000 B.C. - A.D. 250) in order to analyze potential ritual and political functions of the water management system. Using spatial data within GIS, this thesis examines the flow of water across the site as directed by its topographical features. The archaeological record of Takalik Abaj and comparisons to water management systems at other Mesoamerican sites are also used to investigate the functions of the water management system. Thesis findings suggest that the water management system of Takalik Abaj was multi-faceted and that ritual functions tied to the control of water may have contributed to the identities and power of the elite.</p>

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of Theatre and Drama., 2009. / Title from PDF t.p. (viewed on Jul 14, 2010). Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 70-12, Section: A, page: 4529. Adviser: Rakesh H. Solomon.

Os movimentos pela emancipação na América marcaram-na sobremaneira no início do século XIX, pelas conjunturas que levaram à formação dos novos países e também pelas disputas políticas e conflitos armados. Focos de luta surgiam simultaneamente por todo o continente, propiciando a concepção de inúmeros projetos políticos que propunham caminhos diversos para os jovens países. Na América do Sul, leste e oeste experimentam as dificuldades e alimentam as esperanças de sonhar com um mundo novo, opondo-se francamente ao colonizador, seja ele espanhol ou português, enquanto constroem as bases das novas nações. Dentre os idealizadores das novas nações, estavam Francisco de Miranda, Bernardo Monteagudo e José Bonifácio, cada qual buscando, a seu modo, uma direção que levasse as suas Américas à modernidade e à liberdade. Em seus textos, são tratadas diversas questões que desafiam a constituição dos novos Estados, entre elas a delimitação de uma unidade territorial, a construção de uma identidade própria e a definição de uma forma justa de governo, indagações comuns a outros tantos pensadores da época. Por conta disso, tais pontos norteiam, a partir da comparação entre as percepções de cada um dos três autores, esta análise das aproximações e distanciamentos de suas formas de pensar, aparentemente tão diferentes entre si. Assim, acredita-se ser possível encontrar aspectos que levem a uma compreensão da circulação de ideias na América do Sul deste período, indo além do tradicional entendimento de que os processos nas porções espanhola e portuguesa foram díspares em sua essência. / Emancipation movements in America have profoundly scarred the continent in the beginning of the 19th century, for conjunctures which led to the establishment of new countries as well as political disputes and armed conflicts. Uprisings simultaneously rose all over the continent, encouraging innumerous political projects to put forward an array of paths to the newborn countries. In South America, East and West underwent difficulties and nurtured hope of dreaming of a new world, frankly opposing colonizer, Spanish or Portuguese, whilst building new nations foundations. Amid the new nations idealizers were Francisco de Miranda, Bernardo Monteagudo and José Bonifácio, each one looking, by their own means, for a direction that could lead to modernity and freedom. In their corpora, the authors examine several issues that challenge those new States shaping, among which the delimitation of a territorial unity, building self identity and establishing a fair form of government, queries that are shared amongst so many other thinkers at that time. Because of that, the aforementioned points steer, based on the comparison of the perceptions of each of the three authors, this analysis of approximations and distancing of their way of thinking, apparently quite different to each other. That way, we believe that it is possible to find some aspects which take us to a new comprehension of the circulation of ideas in that period South America, outreaching the traditional understanding which states that the political emancipation processes in Spanish and Portuguese regions were disparate in their essence.

<p> Spearthrower devices held a role around the world as a primary weapon and tool before slowly falling out of favor in certain areas for other projectile weapons. While it is widely accepted that spearthrowers were used by the people of the ancient central Andes, comparatively little research has gone into the role that they had as weapons of war, hunting tools, and objects of ceremonial reverence. In addition, the Andes developed a unique style of spearthrower and have produced many examples of spearthrowers with exceptional craftsmanship, leading me to believe that these tools were given special reverence. </p><p> This thesis compiles evidence of who in the Andes was using spearthrowers, and in what contexts, by comparing iconography to existing artifacts. It was determined that they saw the heaviest use among the coastal societies through the Early Intermediate Period and were primarily seen as a symbol in the following years.</p><p>

This study is a social history of the rural mulattoes/ladinos of the District of Mita in eastern Guatemala who rebelled against the Liberal government headed by Mariano Gálvez in Guatemala City in June of 1837. Known as the Carrera movement or the War of the Mountain, this popular uprising began with scattered revolts precipitated by an outbreak of cholera, but soon became a full-scale rebellion that articulated a set of demands and eventually spread across the state of Guatemala and beyond. While the importance of this rebellion in the political history of Central America is widely recognized, this is the first attempt to focus on the ethnicity and social position of the protagonists, to relate rural social structure and the patron-client system to the rebellion, and to link the everyday concerns of this rural population with their political actions. The methodology combines anthropological techniques with chronological history. The early chapters provide a structural analysis of the geography of the area, settlement patterns, households, the economy, and affective life to create a picture of a society that differed in important ways from that of the urban Liberals. The last chapter shows how liberal policies designed to create a new polity based on Enlightenment principles and a free-trade economy antagonized the local population and exacerbated long-standing differences between the urban power structure and rural groups. The Liberals' decision to end banditry on the Camino Real and the methods they pursued to accomplish this goal emerge as the definitive step in the polarization process. The rebels' first engagement with government troops took place in Santa Rosa and was led by local cattle ranchers Teodoro and Benito Mexia. This study finds that a peasant elite, typified by the “mulatto” Teodoro Mexia, played the critical role in catalyzing the rebellion by forging alienated sectors of the local population into a strong regional alliance and by drawing on their substantial resources to fund the war.

This dissertation studies the role of the collective action sector for rural development. A combination of formal modeling, historical and institutional analysis, and econometric methods is used in this research. I develop microeconomic models to analyze the determinants of peasants' decisions to join cooperative institutions, and the corresponding equilibrium fraction of organized peasants. The models suggest multiple organizational equilibria at both local and wider levels. Multiple cooperative equilibria is explained in general by the interplay of two increasing functions: (i) the proportion of cooperators as a function of the expected gains from cooperation, and (ii) the expected gains from cooperation as a function of the proportion of cooperators. The models also study the mechanisms through which cooperation beyond the local level can be achieved. Empirically, I analyze the motivations behind peasants' decisions to organize themselves, and once organized, the ways inequality, gender differences, social capital, and external assistance affect local cooperation. The empirical component of this dissertation is based on fieldwork with peasant organizations in the Paraguayan departments of Concepcion, San Pedro, and Caaguazu carried out between 1995-1996. The results of the fieldwork include two surveys: one of the leadership of 104 peasant committees and the other of 374 peasant households. The most important results of the econometric analysis are that the likelihood of a peasant household joining a peasant organization is an inverse function of higher outside options, the security of her/his landholdings, and the subjective costs of cooperation, and is a positive function of the performance of the cooperative. Cooperative performance is not monotonically related to either the degree of inequality within the community or the level of external assistance; rather, it is of an inverted U-shape form. Cooperative performance increases as the level of women's participation and social capital increases. This dissertation also explores the relationship between democracy and economic development by analyzing the agrarian political economy of Paraguay for the 1954-1996 period. It argues that (i) peasants' organizations play a significant role in rural development and (ii) there is scope for positive synergy between peasants' organizations and the level of political democracy in an agrarian country.

Through a historical narrative that considers the asymmetric relationship between the United States (U.S.) and Puerto Rico (P.R.), based on a dependency conceptual framework, major external (U.S.) and internal (P.R.) factors were analyzed to provide an interpretation that explains the federal jurisdiction of wireless and broadcasting in P.R. The different governmental structures approved by the U.S. Congress for the purpose of local government in the island of P.R.--the Foraker Act of 1900, the Jones Act of 1917, the Puerto Rico Federal Relations Act of 1950, and the Commonwealth status of 1952--as well as the activities of Puerto Rican groups were examined to determine how they challenged and/or supported the federal jurisdiction of wireless and broadcasting in the island. Federal regulations approved by the U.S. Congress to regulate wireless and broadcasting in the U.S.--the Wireless Ship Act of 1910, the Radio Act of 1912, the Radio Act of 1927, and the Communications Act of 1934--were examined to determine their impact in P.R. The activities of governmental and non-governmental U.S. groups, related to the wireless and broadcasting field, affecting Congressional actions and/or their direct actions in the island also entered the analysis. Based on Congressional documents, archival information, interviews, and other sources, the narrative developed in this dissertation describes a process whereby external factors were fundamental in determining the federal jurisdiction of wireless and broadcasting in P.R. To a large extent, the narrative details a colonial process whereby the U.S. government attempted, with relative success, to Americanize the island. The extension of federal jurisdiction to the island was imposed. As a consequence of the regulatory structure in the P.R. the "market model" prevailed in framing broadcasting in the island and commercial imperatives became the basis over which broadcasting would operate. The internal factors that played a role in the development of wireless and broadcasting regulation in P.R. were characterized by consent to U.S. hegemony, conceptual underdevelopment and timid initiatives circumscribed by Congressional limits.

No description available.

The sixteenth-century port of Nombre de Dios in Panama played a crucial role in the colonization of America. From 1519 to 1597, Nombre de Dios was the Atlantic port connecting Spain with the southern Pacific colonies in America. Even though its importance to Spain's New World colonial settlement has been widely recognized, there has never been systematic historical or archaeological research undertaken to document this colonial town and describe its establishment and subsequent development and abandonment.;This study employs a comparative approach to early Spanish urban settlement in Latin America, and combines archaeological and archival data to explain the unique history of Nombre de Dios. Archaeological examination and documentary analysis has revealed the town's physical layout, its location and geographical features, and the settlement's place within the region's trade network. Findings relating to Nombre de Dios are compared to evidence from Cartagena and Veracruz, two of Spain's other sixteenth-century ports-of-call, providing important information regarding the factors responsible for the slow development of Nombre de Dios, and its abandonment before the end of the century.

No description available.