Classic through Postclassic in El Salvador

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Postclassic Mesoamerica: The View from the Southern Frontier" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Beginning with the first formal archaeological studies nearly a century ago, findings in the territory of El Salvador have been recognized as attesting to the establishment of Nahua migrants. This has commonly been interpreted, in conjunction with ethnohistoric accounts, as resulting from a single episode of what has been termed a “Toltec diaspora” of migrants originating in central Mexico or the Gulf Coast during the Early Postclassic, whose linear descendants were the contact period Nahua of Escuintla, Cuscatlán, and Pacific Nicaragua. Here the Terminal Classic through Early Postclassic in the territory of El Salvador is reexamined. It is argued that present evidence does not lend itself to supporting a single Nahua migration, but rather corroborates greater complexity regarding this issue.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)   •
• Postclassic Mesoamerica: The View from the Southern Frontier

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 32011