Mesoamerica (Geographic Keyword)
251-275 (2,387 Records)
Since the 1960s, Mexicayotl communities––or communities focused on Mexican Indigenous revivalism––have pursued an Indigenous cultural recovery. In the United States, these efforts have gained traction among Danza Azteca communities who increasingly employ pre-Hispanic flutes, rattles, and other Mesoamerican instruments in their rituals and performances. Danza Azteca communities have drawn on lines of inquiry that parallel those of Robert Stevenson (1968: 17, 18), including the study of...
Aztec Imperial Strategies in Guerrero, Mexico: Evaluating the Greengo Collection from the Burke Museum, Seattle (2016)
Aztec presence in Guerrero, Mexico is documented ethnohistorically, but archaeological work can be difficult to undertake in this volatile region. The Triple Alliance provinces in Guerrero served as important sources of tribute, but also as buffers against the hostile Purépecha regime to the west. Though Aztec imperial strategies varied in different provinces, tribute policies in Tepecoacuilco were thought to have facilitated intensification of production and reorganization of economic...
Aztec State Making: Ecology, Structure, and the Origin of the State (1983)
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.
Aztecs in the Empire City: The Rise and Fall of Ancient American Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1877–1914 (2018)
With the return of peace after the dislocations of the US Civil War, The Metropolitan Museum of Art was founded in 1870 by businessmen, civic leaders, and artists in New York. Unlike its European counterparts, the institution had no royal collections on which to build. Its ancient American holdings grew through gifts and purchases from diplomats, philanthropists, and collectors. By 1900, with the acquisition of the Petich Collection of some 1500 "Aztec," and "Toltec" works, The American...
The Baalche’ Group: An Investigation of a Preclassic Maya Palace at Yaxnohcah, Campeche, Mexico (2017)
As part of the on-going research into the development of socio-political complexity at the Maya site of Yaxnohcah, the Proyecto Arqueológico Yaxnohcah has been conducting investigations in the Baalche’ Group, a large courtyard group located at the center of the site. The group sits adjacent to many prominent architectural features, including a Preclassic period E-Group assemblage, a ball court, and a water reservoir. Radiocarbon dating and ceramic analysis has revealed that the Baalche’ Group...
The Bajio (Guanajuato/Michoacan) during Epiclassic: Cultural Assertion and Macro-regional Interaction (2015)
In the North-Center region of Mexico, the Bajio knew its peak of populating during Epiclassic period. From the Preclassic background of the Chupicuaro Culture, emerges a rich ceramic and architectural tradition. Following the fall of Teotihucan, the Bajio covers itself with extensive networks of sites organized around ceremonial centers where appear frequently sunken patios and I shape ballcourts. The ceramic is nevertheless far from being uniform, denoting a will of cultural assertion for each...
Balance of Trade, Balance of Power: Marine and riverine networks in Belize (2015)
The Caribbean sea, like the Mediterranean, was a facilitator of travel and communication. In the case of Belize, the relatively shallow waters of the coastal shelf sheltered water-borne Caribbean traffic, and the bevy of coral islands or cayes served as way stations for far-flung coastal trade. Essential to communities in the Maya area, however, was the transfer of goods from the coast to river and lake ports for inland distribution. In this presentation, we endeavour to summarise information...
Balankanche Revisited: Some Preliminary Observations (2018)
With the discovery of passages sealed behind a blockage in 1959, Balankanche became the preeminent cave in Maya archaeology. Because so many of the intact vessels were incense burners and because of the Maya ceremony recorded as part of the investigation, Balankanche’s ritual function was never questioned even though at that time most caves were thought to be habitational. E. Wyllys Andrews IV’s monograph on the cave has remained one of the field’s best reports. In the summer of 2017, the Gran...
Ballgame Ritual: Authority and its Transformation during Late Classic Collapse (2016)
One of the characteristic features of the Classic Veracruz style complex is ballgame imagery on ballcourt panels, molded ceramic vessels, paraphernalia such as yokes, hachas and palmas, not to mention the presence of courts, markers, and stelae or other monuments. Various components of the Classic Veracruz style have been documented throughout the Gulf lowlands and adjoining regions of Mesoamerica. Few examples, however, derive from stratigraphic excavations of in situ deposits. In this...
Ballgames and the Social Networks of the Sierra Sur: What Can Ballcourts Tell Us About Political Negotiation in Southern Oaxaca? (2017)
As a specially marked category of public architecture, ballcourts were both socially-integrative and socially-divisive spaces through hosting games and other important ritual activities. Moreover, research has shown that ballgames in Oaxaca acted as mechanisms of social mediation within and between different ethnolinguistic communities. The distribution of ballcourts is therefore significant and expresses underlying social and political relationships. The Nejapa region is a frontier zone between...
Balsalobre on Idolatry in Oaxaca (1959)
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.
Barutif Raster (2010)
The aim of the LEAP projects was to publish multi-layered e-publications and develop and link them to associated digital archives. The original LEAP project was funded by the AHRC while the LEAP II, A Trans-Atlantic LEAP, was supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. This raster is part of a 2011 LEAP II project "Placing immateriality: situating the material of highland Chiriquí" by Karen Holberg. All files associated with this record must be downloaded to ensure that the raster file opens...
Basalt Least Cost Path Final Map (2010)
The aim of the LEAP projects was to publish multi-layered e-publications and develop and link them to associated digital archives. The original LEAP project was funded by the AHRC while the LEAP II, A Trans-Atlantic LEAP, was supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. This final map project is part of a 2011 LEAP II project "Placing immateriality: situating the material of highland Chiriquí" by Karen Holberg. The files contained in this record include an .mxd map project and an image of the...
Basalt Least Cost Path Final Map (2010)
The aim of the LEAP projects was to publish multi-layered e-publications and develop and link them to associated digital archives. The original LEAP project was funded by the AHRC while the LEAP II, A Trans-Atlantic LEAP, was supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. This final map project is part of a 2011 LEAP II project "Placing immateriality: situating the material of highland Chiriquí" by Karen Holberg. The files contained in this record include an .mxd map project and an image of the...
Baseline Remote Sensing Survey of the Mayan Biosphere Reserve (MBR) in Petén Guatemala (2017)
The Fundación Patrimonio Cultural y Natural Maya (PACUNAM), a non-governmental-organization (NGO) from Guatemala, works for the promotion and preservation of cultural and natural patrimony contained within the Mayan Biosphere Reserve (MBR) in the department of Petén in Guatemala. To aid with their preservation and promotion goals, PACUNAM, has developed a plan to perform an airborne lidar and hyperspectral survey of nearly 14,000 km² of the MBR and neighboring regions over a three year period....
Basin Enterprise: the Next Generations (2019)
This is an abstract from the "The Legacies of The Basin of Mexico: The Ecological Processes in the Evolution of a Civilization, Part 1" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Basin of Mexico book elucidated for a broader audience the work and philosophy of William Sanders and his first generation of collaborators and students and has influenced many generations of Mesoamerican scholars since. We draw on the broad studies of long-term work carried out...
A Bath for 8,000 Gods: Atij and Similar Expressions on Classic Maya Monuments (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Heat, Steam, and Health: The Archaeology of the Mesoamerican Pib Naah (Sweat Baths)" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Maya hieroglyphs are an invaluable source of data about the Classic period religion. However, when it comes to sweat baths, only a small subset of archaeologically investigated structures contains inscriptions. Therefore, any attempt to study this particular aspect of Maya ritual life should consider a...
Bayesian Analysis and Chronological Revisions in Southern Mesoamerica (2017)
The application of Bayesian analysis on radiocarbon dates from key sites in southern Mesoamerica has contributed to chronological revisions, which are leading to a re-evaluation of social processes among major political centers. Main challenges in this analysis include long occupation and mixing of old carbon in construction fills; poor preservation in the tropical environment; and the paucity of short-lived plant remains. Key steps in our application of Bayesian analysis on Mesoamerican...
Bayesian Approaches for Chronology-Building in Maya Archaeology: Direct AMS 14C Dating of Burials in the Belize River Valley (2017)
Chronology-building in Maya archaeology has long been dominated by relative ceramic typologies based on excavations conducted in the 1950s, with date ranges temporally grounded by long-count calendar dates and a small number of imprecise radiocarbon dates. Higher-precision chronologies based on more recent methodological innovations in radiocarbon dating, including Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) 14C dating, Bayesian statistical modeling of radiocarbon dates, and ultrafiltration and XAD...
A Bayesian Model-Based Comparison of Radiocarbon Chronologies for the Earliest Complex Societies in the Maya Lowlands (2017)
Sedentary agricultural villages, ceramic technology, and evidence for institutionalized socio-economic inequality first appeared in the Maya lowlands during the Preclassic Period (1200 cal BC – cal AD 300). The chronological details of these significant cultural developments between different regions of the lowlands remain unclear in many cases because of an emphasis on local ceramic typologies that are often difficult to correlate. We use a Bayesian framework to model high-resolution AMS 14C...
Beautiful Virgins and Male War Captives: The Role of Sex Attribution in Ancient Maya Human Sacrifice at Midnight Terror Cave, Belize (2017)
The prurient element in the popular notion of the Maya sacrifice of "beautiful virgins" during the first half of the twentieth century (Frost and Arnold 1909; Willard 1926) appears to have made researchers wary of the topic of gender in study of human sacrifice. The interest in human sacrifice arose in the 1990s at the same time as the formulation of the warfare hypothesis for the collapse of Maya civilization (Demerast 1990) so that models of human sacrifice tended to assume that victims were...
Before Teotihuacan: The Origins of Complex Society in the Northeast Basin of Mexico (2016)
Teotihuacan grew explosively ca. 100 BC to become the most influential city in Mesoamerica. For several decades little research has been directed toward understanding the origins of complex society in the Teotihuacan Valley. Recent archaeological investigations at the Early-Middle Formative site of Altica provide a fresh perspective on dating the initial establishment of agricultural villages, early social and economic differentiation, and the development of intra-and inter-regional exchange...
Being an Expert Witness in Mexico’s Heritage Management Process: Requirements and Issues (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Archaeological Congress: Multivocal Conversations Furthering the World Archaeological Congress Agenda" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In 2022, the Mexican government introduced a new heritage management process, requiring the participation of expert witnesses to determine the property of Indigenous and Afro-Mexican communities’ knowledge, traditions, intellectual property, and heritage. Mexico’s experience with expert...
Belizean Jade: Why Such a Rich Periphery? (2016)
This paper addresses the question of the place of Belizean Maya jade artifacts within a broader Mesoamerican context. More specifically I examine the similarities between Belizean jade and other jade finds in different Maya areas. I discuss why a significant number of major jade finds have occurred in Belize while it is often considered to be on the periphery of Maya culture as well as examining the variations in the iconography of carved images on jade. I draw on evidence of recent finds and...
Bellicose Relations between Cacaxtla and Xochicalo in the Epiclassic Period (2015)
Whereas the Epiclassic (AD 600-900) has long been recognized as a period characterized by increased conflict and warfare between the dominant city-states of central Mexico, concrete evidence for actual military actions has been rather limited. Here we discuss epigraphic and iconographic evidence that suggest that two of the major Epiclassic powers, namely Cacaxtla and Xochicalco, were involved in a violent conflict, and that Cacaxtla succeeded in capturing several prominent individuals from...