Michoacan (State / Territory) (Geographic Keyword)
351-375 (477 Records)
This is an abstract from the "Coastal Connections: Pacific Coastal Links from Mexico to Ecuador" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Desde los primeros estudios arqueológicos desarrollados en el occidente mesoamericano han sido encontrados diversos rasgos culturales, vocablos y artefactos similares a materiales existentes en el noroeste sudamericano. Destacan entre ellos los materiales Capacha, los de tumbas de tiro y la metalurgia, aportando...
Pumas and Vultures and Wolves, Oh My! The Appropriation and Alteration of Teotihuacan Processing Predators at Tula (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Animal Symbolism in Postclassic Mesoamerica: Papers in Honor of Cecelia Klein" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper examines the predatory animals on the relief friezes of Pyramid B at Tula, clearly based on Teotihuacan models originally expressed in different media and contexts--murals in interior spaces--and the possible reasons for both Tula's borrowing of this imagery and its redeployment in sculpture in the...
Quail in the Religious Life of the Ancient Nahuas (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Animal Symbolism in Postclassic Mesoamerica: Papers in Honor of Cecelia Klein" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In documentary sources recording Nahuatl culture of the Late Postclassic period, a bird called zollin, identified as a quail (Cyrtonyx montezumae) is especially prominent. Indeed, these small birds were often chosen to be sacrificed before the divine effigies and, in some cases, to be consumed during ritual...
Quetzalcoatl in Late Aztec Sculptures (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Tales of the Feathered Serpent: Refining Our Understanding of an Enigmatic Mesoamerican Being" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Quetzalcoatl (Feathered Serpent) is often characterized as a wind god, but in Aztec sculptures, the traits of the wind god Ehecatl, principally the buccal mouth mask, are not found mixed with feathered serpent imagery. The mix is found in pictorial manuscripts, and alluded to in written...
Reading Power from Above: Subsistence, Monumentality, and Water Ritual in Ancient Teotihuacan (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Teotihuacan: Multidisciplinary Research on Mesoamerica's Classic Metropolis" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Proponents of collective and autocratic models of Teotihuacan’s sociopolitical organization relate the control and ritual of water to the development of complex society, but how such institutions materialize on the landscape remains poorly understood. We present evidence from six years of archaeological survey,...
Reaping the Rewards of Incipient Agriculture from the Land to the Sea and the Mangroves In Between (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. During the Archaic to Early Formative transition, the Soconusco populations began adopting more sedentary subsistence strategies and investing more in their local environments. Evidence from sediment cores demonstrates that during the Archaic, populations were burning inland landscapes and starting to grow maize. The environmental effects of incipient...
A Reassessment of Obsidian Procurement Networks on Guatemala's Pacific Slope (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Networks of long-distance exchange in quotidian commodities are essential aspects of prehistoric economies. On the Pacific Slope of Guatemala, there was no more important commodity than obsidian, which accounts for almost all cutting edges found in archaeological contexts. Obsidian sourcing studies on the Pacific Slope have been limited, relied on very...
Recent Advances of the Tlalancaleca Archaeological Project, Puebla, Central Mexico. (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Tlalancaleca was one of the largest settlements before the rise of Teotihuacan in Central Mexico and likely provided cultural and historical settings for the creation of Central Mexican urban traditions during later periods. Yet its urbanization process as well as socio-spatial organization remain poorly understood. The Proyecto Arqueologico Tlalancaleca,...
Recent Research at the Neighborhood Center of Tlajinga, Teotihuacan (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Teotihuacan: Multidisciplinary Research on Mesoamerica's Classic Metropolis" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Investigations of the Proyecto Arqueológico Tlajinga Teotihuacan (PATT) in 2019 focused on the southern neighborhood center of this cluster of non-elite residences in the southern periphery of the ancient Mexican metropolis. Research objectives included understanding the social infrastructure of public space...
Recipe and Quality of Lime Plaster Samples from Plaza One, Teotihuacan (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In 1959, the Teotihuacan Mapping Project, led by Rene Millon, excavated at the site of Plaza One in Teotihuacan and acquired a myriad of artifacts, including lime plaster samples. This presentation focuses on the examination of these plaster samples via Optical Microscopy and SEM-EDS, which are used to evaluate the similarities and differences in the building...
Reconsidering the Penal System in Aztec Society: A New Perspective on Human Sacrifice and Enslavement (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Misinformation and Misrepresentation Part 2: Reconsidering “Human Sacrifice,” Religion, Slavery, Modernity, and Other European-Derived Concepts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The contribution deals with the question of how crimes were punished in the Aztec penal system. We know that Aztec society—as many other premodern societies—did not have prisons for long-term punishment of crimes, nor for any forms of preventive...
Reconstructing Land-Use and Socio-environmental Change at Epiclassic Chicoloapan Using Plant Macroremain Analyses (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Central Mexico after Teotihuacan: Everyday Life and the (Re)Making of Epiclassic Communities" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The site of Chicoloapan Viejo represents a long-term occupation that spanned multiple cultural phases, each associated with changes in population size, settlement pattern, and sociopolitical organization. These changes were also accompanied by climatic fluctuations of varying intensity. This...
Reducing Collective Action Problems among Larger-Scale Societies: Building Trust, Assurance, and Cooperation at Late Postclassic Tlaxcallan, Mexico (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Advances in Puebla/Tlaxcala Archaeology" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Collective action problems arise when individuals expend energy or resources to obtain a common goal or outcome. However, conflicting interests hinder cooperation and preclude joint action. Visibility and trust are two factors that reduce collective action problems among small and mid-sized groups, but research is limited on how these variables...
Refining the Regional Ceramic Chronology of the Postclassic Basin of Mexico to account for Spatial-Temporal Variability (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The archaeology of the Postclassic (c. AD 900-1520) Basin of Mexico (BOM) is among the most intensively studied in the New World. In spite of this, longstanding questions about population dynamics and social change remain unresolved due to the persistent gaps and coarse resolution of its regional-scale ceramic chronology. Ongoing fieldwork and...
Reflecting on the History and Use of Rectangular Obsidian "Mirrors" from Central Mexico: Reinterpreting Old Museum Collections (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper highlights the relevance and potential of collections-based research through a case study of rectangular obsidian "mirrors" from Central Mexico, typically associated with the Aztec, housed at the Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI). To date these highly polished obsidian objects are found exclusively in museum...
Regional Settlement, Subsistence, and Environment after the Demise of Teotihuacan (2024)
This is an abstract from the "What Happened after the Fall of Teotihuacan?" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Significant changes in sociopolitical and economic organization following the collapse of the Teotihuacan state between the sixth and seventh centuries CE are evident in settlement patterns as well as archaeological materials including ceramics and lithics. The potential magnitude of this event and subsequent ramifications within the valley...
Reinventing the Early Postclassic of Cholula: Results from the UA-1 Household Compounds (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Cholula to Chachoapan: Celebrating the Career of Michael Lind" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The culture history of Cholula (Puebla, Mexico) has been a roller coaster as different scholars with different paradigms have radically altered direction over the past 100 years. Consequently, when I got onboard the consensus was that Cholula had been abandoned at the end of the Classic period, in the same way as Teotihuacan,...
Relational Complexity in Mesoamerican Sacrificial Ritual Images (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Sacrificial and Autosacrifice Instruments in Mesoamerica: Symbolism and Technology" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In Mesoamerican religious practice, ritual killings (allosacrifice) and so-called practices of self-sacrifice (autosacrifice) often coexist simultaneously. Therefore, the ethnographic, iconographic, and historical analysis should therefore focus on what may be called the condensation of ritual relations....
Residue Analysis of Cooking Vessels from Early Postclassic Xaltocan, Mexico (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. We examine the use of cooking vessels from Early Postclassic (AD 900-1250) Xaltocan, Mexico, through residue analysis of ceramic sherds. The analysis combined phytolith, pollen, and starch analyses with Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR) and Energy Dispersive X-Ray Fluorescence (ED-XRF) conducted at the Paleoresearch Institute. Because our...
Return to Hacienda Metepec: Exploring Continuity and Change at Teotihuacan (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Central Mexico after Teotihuacan: Everyday Life and the (Re)Making of Epiclassic Communities" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent archaeological research in central Mexico has examined the transformations of prehispanic communities during the Epiclassic period (AD 550–850) from the perspective of Teotihuacan’s neighboring settlements and peripheral regions. Less attention, however, has been given to the concomitant...
Reviewing Urbanization and Deurbanization at Teotihuacan (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Urbanization is a global phenomenon with regional and temporal variations. By 2050, over two-thirds of the world’s population will live in cities. Nevertheless, there is also the opposite process - deurbanization and the emergence of abandoned urban areas. The ancient city of Teotihuacan offers us a research framework to understand both processes because...
Revisiting Eastern Morelos and Teotihuacan: Recent Research at San Ignacio, A Regional Center in Teotihuacan's Rural Countryside. (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. San Ignacio is located in the Amatzinac Valley of Morelos, approximately 10 kilometers south of the Formative site of Chalcatzingo, where it was the regional center and largest site in Eastern Morelos during the Classic period (300 - 600 CE). Previous studies argued based on regional settlement data that San Ignacio was a possible Teotihuacan...
Revisiting Tula, Hidalgo Epiclassic Ceramics: Progress and Recent NAA Results (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Significant progress has been made in the description and definition of typological and compositional assemblages of Tula, Hidalgo regional ceramics during the Epiclassic period of the Central Highlands. Neutron Activation Analysis conducted at the Archaeometry Laboratory and the Research Reactor Center at the University of Missouri (MURR) now includes...
Ritual and Domestic Plant Use on the Southern Pacific Coast of Mexico: A Starch Grain Study of the Formative to Classic Period Transition at Izapa (2018)
In southern Mesoamerica, the transition from the Formative period to Classic period (100 B.C.- A.D. 400) was a time of population decline, cessation of monumental construction, and the abandonment of many sites. Environmental explanations such as drought and volcanic activity have been proposed as potential trigger factors for the widespread collapse at the close of the Formative period. Current evidence suggests that residents of the early capital of Izapa, located on a piedmont environmental...
Ritual Human Sacrifice among the Tarascans (2018)
This study reports on osteological remains excavated from the Great Platform at Tzintzuntzán, the Postclassic (A.D. 1300-1522) Tarascan ceremonial capital. The osteological deposit was first uncovered by Alfonso Caso in 1937-1944, re-visited by Rubin de Borbolla and Roman Piña Chan during the 1960’s, by Efrain Cardenas in 1992, and most recently in 2011 by the Proyecto Especial de Michoacán. In 1992, 194 skull fragments (MNI=40) and 28 modified femur fragments were recovered while the most...