Mesoamerica (Geographic Keyword)
2,026-2,050 (2,387 Records)
Numerous caves in the Southern Mexican Highlands are found in remote locations far from settlements and presumably along boundaries between what were once Classic and/or Late Post-Classic period polities. These caves were recognized as unique features of the ritual landscape and differed in terms of location, difficulty of access, and entity venerated. While some caves seem to have had a more local, even domestic use, others were of inter-regional renown. Influenced by socioeconomic and...
Seeding the Clouds: A Model of Late Classic Puuc Political Process (2016)
This paper synthesizes the growing body of chronological, settlement, economic, epigraphic, and iconographic data generated from recent research to critically examine traditional models of a short Terminal Classic occupation for the Puuc. The Late Classic period (600-800 AD) was the period in which the political and economic systems of Puuc states crystallized. Settlement patterns suggest that land was a widely available resource during the seventh century, but that the rapid infilling of the...
Seeds for the gods: chía (Salvia hispanica) in Teotihuacan ritual offerings (2017)
Over the last decades, as a result of archaeological research inside of the Sun and the Moon pyramids in Teotihuacan, significant concentrations of chía (Salvia hispanica) seeds have been recovered in association with ritual contexts. This is particularly true in Offering 2, pit 59 of the Sun Pyramid and in Burial 6 of the Moon Pyramid. The archaeological artifacts were similar in both contexts, for example Tlaloc vessels, projectile points, pyrite disks and faunal remains, among others. In this...
Seeking Molecular Evidence of the Ritual Function of Unslipped and Monochrome Slipped Ceramic Types at Naj Tunich, Guatemala (2016)
A large portion of the ceramic assemblage recovered from the Maya cave site of Naj Tunich, Guatemala consists of unslipped and monochrome slipped ceramic types generally considered to be “utilitarian” or “domestic” wares. This identification is based upon type-variety analysis rather than any evidence of the actual use to which they were put. That these ceramics were deposited in conjunction with domestic activities is at odds with the widely accepted interpretation that the Maya employed caves...
seibalSim: toward modeling communities (not populations) of Early Formative Mesoamerica (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In "The Forms of Capital," Pierre Bourdieu writes: “[t]he social world is accumulated history, and if it is not to be reduced to a discontinuous series of instantaneous mechanical equilibria between agents who are treated as interchangeable particles, one must reintroduce into it the notion of capital and with it, accumulation and all its effects.” His attempt...
Selective use and technology of limestone and lime products employed in mosaic and stucco decorations in Ek´ Balam (2015)
This study comprises preliminary results of analyses made on different type of limestones employed in models and stucco supports, and other stone products used by the ancient Maya of Ek´ Balam. The ancient Maya technology results in high efficiency and durable materials appropriate for the architectural and decorative program at the site, which has positively influenced the preservation of this heritage. The study of mineral elements from various limestone, and lime products (sascab and kut)...
Serpents and Bowls: An Analysis of the War Serpent Vessel from Burial 61 at El Perú-Waka' (2016)
In 2012, Dr. Olivia Navarro-Farr and her team excavated the tomb (Burial 61) of a Maya ruler in a large ceremonial structure at the site of El Perú-Waka’ in Petén, Guatemala. A confluence of taphonomic, epigraphic, and ceramic evidence underscored the identification of these remains as likely pertaining to Lady K’abel, a queen already well known from texts associated with that ancient city. This poster will explore one of the artifacts found in Burial 61, called the War Serpent Vessel, placed...
Settlement and Mobility in Early Colonial Tabasco, Mexico (2021)
This is an abstract from the "The Urban Question: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Investigating the Ancient Mesoamerican City" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. One of the most pervasive changes in Mesoamerican early colonial period was the new form of urban and town configuration and their relations with the surrounding landscape. Native settlement abandonment, forced congregations, and changes in communication and trade routes profoundly...
Settlement at Matacanela: Preliminary Interpretations (2015)
In this presentation we discuss data collection strategies implemented in the Matacanela Archaeological Project and provide initial interpretations of these data. Field work, completed in the summer of 2014, consisted of systematic surface collection, geophysical survey, and mapping. This discussion focuses primarily on data acquired through surface collection. Using these data, we address the architectural organization of the site, identify possible areas of craft production, and site...
Settlement Beyond the Alluvial Plains: Recent Findings from the 2016 Río Verde Settlement Project (RVSP), Coastal Oaxaca, Mexico (2017)
From January-June of 2016, an interdisciplinary dissertation study was conducted in the lower Río Verde Valley, Oaxaca, Mexico which was designed to investigate how prehispanic settlement patterning was affected by environmental productivity. The Río Verde Settlement Project (RVSP) included a continuation of the regional full-coverage survey as well as a systematic sedimentological sampling program to examine regional variation in soil fertility. This paper focuses on the initial results of the...
Settlement data from the 1960-1975 Basin of Mexico Surveys (2014)
Data analyzed in Ortman, S. G., A. H. F. Cabaniss, J. Sturm, and L. M. A. Bettencourt, The Pre-History of Urban Scaling, PLOS ONE (Feb. 2014).
Settlement Development and Social Landscapes at the Classic Period Maya center Uxbenká (2017)
Using a Human Behavioral Ecology (HBE) framework, the social and environmental factors that influenced community development have been modeled at Uxbenká, a Classic period Maya center located in the southern foothills of the Maya Mountains. This study focuses on settlement decision making dynamics using a chronological assessment of the expansion of settlements based on radiocarbon dating and ceramic typologies in conjunction with statistical analyses to test which factors influenced patch...
Settlement Ecology in the Tula Region of Mesoamerica: A Local Landscape Perspective (2017)
Based on seminal contributions by Suzy and Paul Fish associated with full-coverage surveys and agave cultivation, this paper explores changes in regional settlement patterns in relation to land-surface morphology in the Tula region in Mesoamerica during the Classic to Postclassic periods (200 CE–1500 CE). Drawing on our field surveys, independent settlement data from the Tula Region, and landform segmentation and classification in Geographic Information Systems (GIS), this paper illustrates that...
Settlement Pattern Analysis at a Hinterland Community in Northwestern Belize: Results of the Medicinal Trail Reconnaissance and Mapping Project (2017)
The Medicinal Trail Reconnaissance and Mapping Project (MTRAMP) began in 2013 and just completed its fourth season in 2016. Those four seasons, plus the integration of previous mapping endeavors, has refined our understanding of the size and distribution of households and numerous landscape features that have been, or continue to be, the focus of excavations. Intensive survey and mapping of the Medicinal Trail locality has revealed, (a) that the largest, and most complex architectural groups are...
Settlement Pattern Excavations at Kaminaljuyu, Guatemala (1979)
This resource is a citation record only, the Center for Digital Antiquity does not have a copy of this document. The information in this record has been migrated into tDAR from the National Archaeological Database Reports Module (NADB-R) and updated. Most NADB-R records consist of a document citation and other metadata but do not have the documents themselves uploaded. If you have a digital copy of the document and would like to have it curated in tDAR, please contact us at comments@tdar.org.
Settlement Patterns of the Central Yucatan and Southern Campeche Regions (1978)
This resource is a citation record only, the Center for Digital Antiquity does not have a copy of this document. The information in this record has been migrated into tDAR from the National Archaeological Database Reports Module (NADB-R) and updated. Most NADB-R records consist of a document citation and other metadata but do not have the documents themselves uploaded. If you have a digital copy of the document and would like to have it curated in tDAR, please contact us at comments@tdar.org.
Settlement Scaling and Increasing Returns in an Ancient Society (2015)
Main text and SI of published paper in PDF format. The SI includes a series of datasets derived from the Basin of Mexico surveys that are analyzed in the main text.
Settlement Survey of the Rural Mountainous Region of Quiechapa in Southern Mexico (2017)
While extensive research has been conducted in and around well-known sociopolitical centers located in valley and coastal regions of southern Mexico, relatively little work has been done in the rural regions outside these core areas. Specifically, one of the understudied regions of southern Mexico is the mountainous region between the highlands and Pacific coastal lowlands. Recently, El Proyecto Arqueológico de Quiechapa (PAQuie) conducted a Full-coverage pedestrian survey of a 99 sq. km area in...
Seventh Century Star Wars: Reassessing the Role of Warfare in Shaping Classic Period Maya Society in the Southern Lowlands (2015)
At the time that Forest of Kings was written, Mayanists were unsure of how impactful Maya warfare actually was. Did it serve symbolic and ritual purposes like the Aztec flower-wars? Or, was Maya warfare actually waged for territorial gain? Forest of Kings was one of the first books to situate Maya conflict as warfare for territorial control. But, the depth and nature of this control as well as the way in which warfare articulated with and affected broader Maya society could not be answered in...
Shadows of War, Shadows of Peace: Sites from El Salvador’s Civil War (2017)
The Salvadoran civil war, fought from 1980 to 1992, devastated the country and left 75,000 to 100,000 people dead. Much of the worst fighting was in the northeastern department of Morazán. Numerous battles were fought there, where several terrible civilian massacres occurred as well. Through most of the war, northern Morazán was a primary stronghold of the FMLN guerillas. The poster examines two civil war sites in northern Morazán. The first, Cerro Pelón - the northern spur of Cerro Gigante, was...
Shake It Off: The Ancient Sound of Ceramic Vessel Rattles (Maracas) from Tala and Teuchitlan, Jalisco, West Mexico (2016)
In the past 60 years, the presence of musical instruments, musicians, and dancing in West Mexican art has been frequently discussed but largely unanalyzed, limited to comparison and contextualization of individual pieces, or occasional mention tangentially as part of some other narrative. The cursory treatment of this class of material has resulted in many unanswered questions: who, for example, made these instruments? Who played them? How were they made? How and when were they used? What do...
Shared Practices and Identities in the Northern Settlement of Actuncan, Belize (2015)
This poster examines how urban families developed and shared neighborhood identities at the Maya city of Actuncan, Belize, ca. AD 800-900, a time when the city experienced rapid population growth as surrounding centers, including Xunantunich, declined. To investigate household relationships, this research considers the nature and location of activity patterns in and around three commoner households to infer shared practices and the shared identities that those activities both enabled and...
Sharing Wares and Waging Wars: The Politics of Ceramic Exchange at the Classic Maya Site of El Zotz, Guatemala (2017)
The Classic Maya city of El Zotz, relatively small compared to its neighbors, is situated geographically, and at times politically, between El Perú-Waka’ to the west and Tikal to the east. The archaeological site occupies an elevated position within the Buenavista Valley, a southwest to northeast corridor running for some 32 km to the north of the Lake Petén Itza region. The valley connects the northeast and northwest Petén, from Chetumal Bay to the Bay of Campeche, placing the site in a...
Shifting Allegiances at Yaxuna during the Early to Late Classic: Territory and the Loss of Independent Rule (2015)
The site of Yaxuna, Yucatan, Mexico was an independent Maya city from the Formative to Early Classic periods. While the size of its territory during the early periods is unknown due to the lack of regional data on other large early cities in Central Yucatan, the Early Classic dynasty at Yaxuna was violently and abruptly vanquished towards the end of this period. At this time, a 100 kilometer causeway was also constructed connecting Yaxuna to the large metropolis of Coba, which was at its...
Shifting Domestic Economies at Postclassic Period Moxviquil: Insights from Ceramic Petrography (2017)
The Early to Late Postclassic Period transition brought substantial changes to the political and economic organization of many regions of Mesoamerica. For the networked polities of highland Chiapas, these changes included substantial decreases in population at existing monumental centers; the establishment of new political centers in several principal highland valleys, and the establishment of an expansionary Chiapanec state in the Central Depression, centered on the city of Chiapa de Corzo....