Mesoamerica (Other Keyword)
1-25 (93 Records)
Regime change is a social process that has occurred throughout human history and yet much is still unknown about how political developments shape local communities. This paper examines the impacts of the Late Postclassic (1350-1530 CE) Purépecha Empire on residents at Angamuco, an ancient city within the Lake Pátzcuaro Basin imperial heartland in Michoacán, Mexico. Imperial narratives in ethnohistoric texts emphasize that authorities controlled craft production, tribute, and social practices....
All in Good Time: the "New Highland Chronology" and the Sculptures of Kaminaljuyú, Guatemala (2015)
This paper considers the impact of the new highland chronology proposed by Dr. Inomata on prevailing interpretations of the stone sculptures of Kaminaljuyú. The revised chronology moves the archaeological record of Kaminaljuyú approximately 300 years forward, shifting the site’s sculptures to a wholly new cultural and chronological framework. This paper begins the process of re-contextualizing the art of Kaminaljuyú by investigating the ways in which the new chronology disrupts and/or supports...
The Altica Project: Reframing the Formative Basin of Mexico (2017)
The Altica Project, that began in 2014, is an important step in addressing the limited problem-oriented research at Formative sites in the Basin of Mexico for over two decades. Altica is the earliest-known settled village in the Teotihuacan Valley and one of the only first-farming village sites in the Basin of Mexico that has not been engulfed by the urban sprawl of Mexico City. Despite its small size and remote location, Altica was an important piece in Early and Middle Formative exchange...
Amacuzac archaeological project. (2016)
Arqlgo. Pablo Sereno Uribe. INAH Guerrero. The Chimalacatlán archaeological project has focused its research in the southern section of the state of Morelos. Initially, this archaeological site was excavated by the archaeologist Florencia Müller in 1943. The first actions developed by the Chimalacatlan archaeological project centered on the conservation and restoration of the different buildings along the site, focusing on those buildings that were extremely damaged. Subsequently, several...
Animal Use in Ancient Maya Terminal Deposits: Examining Faunal Remains from sites in the Belize Valley to Identify Ritual Activities (2017)
Zooarchaeological materials from terminal deposits in the Belize Valley have the potential to assist archaeologists with understanding if terminal deposits represent ritual activities. This poster presents the results of zooarchaeological investigations of terminal deposits at the sites of Lower Dover and Baking Pot. While archaeologists from the Belize Valley Archaeological Reconnaissance Project (BVAR) have focused on the pottery and lithic materials in these deposits a thorough comparative...
The Archaeobotany of Ritual: The Role of Palm (Arecaceae) in Ancient Maya Caves (2017)
The past several decades of research have identified caves as important loci for Precolumbian and historic Maya ritual activity. To the ancient Maya, caves served as portals to the underworld, functioning as sites where ritual practitioners could be in closer contact with important deities and enact rites associated with natural forces. The Belize River Valley has been a significant area for cave exploration and excavation, and Stela Cave in particular, located in the Cayo District in western...
Are Two Heads Still Better than One? Considering a Unified Origin for American Social Complexity (2016)
For half a century, scholars have listed Mesoamerica and South America alongside the Near East, Egypt, China, and India as independent loci of emergent social complexity. Yet, recent scholarship has placed an increasing emphasis on the role of multi-regionalism and mobility in the emergence of world civilizations. These theoretical shifts, alongside suggestive findings of agricultural, material, and ideological unity in the Formative Americas, require us to ask: were pathways to complexity in...
Arqueología Comunitaria en la Región Ixil de Guatemala (2015)
Esta ponencia detalla la reciente investigación participativa en las comunidades de Santa María Nebaj, San Juan Cotzal y San Gaspar Chajul, localizadas en el Departamento de El Quiché, Guatemala. La investigación socialmente comprometida comienza con la elaboración de un atlas regional que reconozca y actualice el listado "oficial" de sitios arqueológicos para su protección. Entre las herramientas metodológicas más valiosas destacan los datos provenientes de historias orales que sobreviven...
Arquitectura Preclásica en el Grupo Balam Acrópolis Central de El Mirador, Peten (2015)
La Gran Acrópolis Central es el corazón del sitio arqueológico El Mirador, el cual presenta diferentes grupos de edificaciones de variada complejidad. Uno de ellos es el Grupo Balam con arquitectura del Preclásico Tardío. Se investigó los aspectos físicos, espaciales, funcionales, sociales e ideológicos a través de una secuencia arquitectónica minuciosa. El estudio permitió conocer no solamente los materiales y sistemas constructivos, las remodelaciones arquitectónicas, el arte en estuco...
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...
Bells, Blades and Bodegas: The Pervasive Influences of Payson Sheets (2016)
Payson Sheets has influenced the work of a great number of archaeologists over the years, particularly researchers interested in the nature of households and the quotidian aspects of domestic life, lithic production and use, and in the field of ‘disaster archaeology.’ This paper highlights some of those influences in the work of the Maya Archaeometallurgy Project and, more recently, the Ambergris Caye Archaeological Project II, both of which are in Belize. This paper focuses on the...
The Bioarchaeology of the Cerro de la Cruz Cemetery (2015)
This paper discusses preliminary bioarchaeological findings from the Late Formative cemetery at Cerro de la Cruz in the lower Río Verde Valley on the Pacific coast of Oaxaca. The Cerro de la Cruz cemetery has figured prominently in a long-running debate over the hypothesized conquest of the region by Monte Albán. We discuss the results of detailed bioarchaeological analyses of four individuals from the cemetery in the context of an ongoing regional study. Although taphonomic processes...
The Birth of Ehecatl: The Cultural Origins of the Avian Wind God OF Central Mexico (2015)
One of the most striking deities of the Aztec pantheon is Ehecatl-Quetzalcoatl, a duck-billed being embodying such ethereal concepts as rain-bringing wind and the breath of life. He is in jarring contrast to Quetzalcoatl, who although embodying the same concepts of wind, is a quetzal-plumed rattlesnake in Aztec thought. This study argues that in contrast to the plumed serpent, Ehecatl-Quetzalcoatl constitutes a relatively recent introduction of an avian wind deity from eastern Mesoamerica into...
Building Power: The Teotepec Palace as Materialized Ideology (2016)
Discussions of Classic Period (ca. AD 300-900) architecture in southern Veracruz, Mexico generally emphasize patterning in mound-plaza arrangements, with an array of configurations vying for preeminence across the coastal lowlands. Often lacking from these analyses, however, is a more nuanced consideration of the built environment's ideological implications. This paper examines palaces as important reflections of power's materialization in southern Veracruz. Specifically, we consider the palace...
Bundled Transfers and Water Shrines:the big-historical implications of a pan-American phenomenon (2017)
Even a cursory outline of the pan-continental history of non-domestic circular architecture impels us to relate similar buildings, some of which are water shrines, in the greater Cahokia region to Mesoamerica and the Southwest. In the central Mississippi valley, standardized steam baths, rotundas, and circular platforms make a dramatic appearance in the late eleventh century CE. Explaining the big-historical patterns, of which this appearance is a part, entails theorizing the bundled transfer of...
Burial Distribution as a Reflection of Social Organization in Late Postclassic Tlaxcallan (2016)
The Late Postclassic state of Tlaxcallan represents a void in Aztec hegemony that is still poorly understood. Ethnohistoric studies, extensive archaeological survey and limited excavation suggest that the social and political organization of this group diverged from the empire’s policies of rule, allowing for much local authority and cooperative governance. Fargher et al. (2010) argue that a unique form of social organization may have contributed to the state’s ability to remain autonomous from...
Cacaxtla en el devenir histórico mesoamericano: una propuesta desde sus expresiones plásticas. (2016)
El sitio arqueológico de Cacaxtla es famoso por la pintura mural y la importancia que ésta tiene como fuente de información para el entendimiento del desarrollo prehispánico de la región. Sin embargo, esta expresión plástica en particular es la que mayor atención ha recibido y en ocasiones se desarticula de aquellas hechas en otros materiales como la cerámica o la lítica encontradas en el Gran Basamento y en su periferia. En ese sentido, esta ponencia tiene como objetivo exponer la necesidad de...
Cave Paintings From the Sixteenth Century: Representations of Contact Period in the Town of Atzala, North of Guerrero (2022)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Paper / Report Submission (General Sessions)" , at the 2022 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Rock paintings have been an important way of representing beliefs, religious, social and political aspects of communities. In the sixteenth century, after the arrival of Europeans to Mesoamerica, a series of cultural integrations took place, in which beliefs and social aspects of Indigenous people and Europeans merged. I will...
Center and Satellites The Relationship of Templo Mayor to Similar twin-temple pyramids in Central Mexico (2015)
This poster displays the relationship between the Great Temple of Tenochtitlán and four smaller pyramids, of similar architecture, concurrently in operation during the period of Aztec dominance in central Mexico. I will demonstrate how the satellite pyramids worked in conjunction with Templo Mayor to form a cohesive religious network, reflecting shared ideology through common ritual use . Using the ethnographic analogy of medieval Catholicism, I will show how Mexica-Aztec religion utilized this...
CHANGES IN OBSIDIAN SUPPLY DURING THE CLASSIC TO POSTCLASSIC TRANSITION IN PREHISPANIC PUEBLA-TLAXCALA (2016)
The Puebla-Tlaxcala region witnessed several shifts in political and economic power during the Classic to Postclassic transition. This area played a pivotal role in the development of cultural complexity following the demographic rearrangements that followed the fall of Teotihuacan as a pan-regional state power. However, little research has been carried on understanding shifts in exchange networks, especially on the trade of obsidian materials. Using XRF-p analysis, this paper seeks to provide...
Children as social actors within the domestic group at Monte Albán, Oaxaca. Mexico (2015)
This paper starts from a micro and qualitative approach to describe and analyze the social position of individuals: children, women and men within various domestic units in Monte Alban, Oaxaca, through archaeological indicators of prestige, power and wealth. The methodology uses funerary practices and its meaning in social terms within the domestic group, to identify the social role especially of children, a sector of the population rarely studied. The location of burials into de domestic unit...
Climbing the Home of the Rain Gods: Mountain Cults in Ancient Central Mexico (2017)
According to Henry B. Nicholson, the rain deity Tlaloc enjoyed the most active and widespread cult in ancient Mexico. This assertion is surely correct, and is further evidenced from later ethnohistoric and ethnographic sources. Closely related to Tlaloc - and his earlier manifestations - were the Tepictoton, little directional mountain deities venerated during the veintenas of Tepeilhuitl and Atemoztli. In this paper we review Nicholson's original observations seen in the light of new...
Combating Researcher Bias in Archaeological Investigations of Identity (2015)
There is extensive evidence that people are self-serving in the interpretation of data and are very likely to reach their desired conclusions. Archaeologists have grappled with this issue as it pertains to the construction of meaningful analogs, but there has been little effort to follow through with an evaluation of archaeological analogies. I propose a methodology for combating researcher bias in archaeological analysis and apply it at El Coyote, a Classic Period center in western...
Creating the Center, Interaction in the Central Karstic Uplands during the Preclassic (2017)
From roughly 800 BCE, evidence supports the development of a widespread regional interaction sphere centered in the Central Karstic Uplands. This paper discusses specific data regarding the origins of this network and the subsequent integration of the Central Karstic Uplands as an economic force in the Maya lowlands. Scholars have long recognized the strong affiliations among the major cities that comprise this network during the Preclassic. Recently artifacts recovered from sites point to...
Cultural practices and trade routes in the Sierra Norte of Puebla during the Middle Formative. Archaeology of the Teteles de Avila Region. (2017)
The first systematic excavations at the archaeological site of "Teteles de Avila Castillo", in the northeastern regional province of Puebla, Mexico, in 2015, resulted in the identification of elements and cultural practices that allow us to locate this settlement in an early chronological period for this region. Additionally we can understand the relationship between the central highlands of Mesoamerica and the northern Gulf of Mexico, previous to the Teotihuacan upswing.