Michoacan (State / Territory) (Geographic Keyword)
401-425 (477 Records)
In a 2012 article exploring the spatial structure of post-Tlamimilolpa phase Teotihuacan, Mexico, we invoked both a materialist body of method-theory known as space syntax and an interactional theory of community development. Through this framework, we discussed community structure and systems of authority expressed by the architectural masses and spaces of the city. In this paper, the authors revisit this approach, with fresh eyes and in the context of our growing knowledge of ancient urbanism....
Spoiler Alert: Bioarchaeological Study of Cremation Funerary Urns with an Application of Computer Tomography (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Tzintzuntzan, Capital of the Tarascan Empire: New Perspectives" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Nine urns from the early Postclassic cemetery in Los Tamarindos (Tierra Caliente, Michoacán, Mexico) containing human cremains have been excavated with the support of a CT scan. Selected examples from this sample will be presented to demonstrate the analytical potential of the methodology that merges bioarchaeological...
Standardization of Apartment Compounds at Teotihuacan, Mexico (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. How standardized were the apartment compounds at Teotihuacan? Some archaeologists have claimed they were highly standardized in size and form, while others have claimed they are all different. How can this question be answered rigorously? We investigate indications of standardization in the apartment compounds of Teotihuacan, Mexico using a geo-referenced...
Stepping Out: The Maya Underworld and the Red Temple at Cacaxtla (2018)
The murals of Cacaxtla, Tlaxcala, have long thrown the issue of Central Mexico-Maya interaction into high relief. There we find the richest evidence of interaction between these two cultural zones, though whether this amounts to citation, appropriation, fusion, or immigration is open to debate and contestation. This paper re-examines the stairway murals of the Red Temple for what they tell us about a Maya world seen through a Central Mexican lens. A particular focus falls on the link between...
Summit Camp (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Heritage Sites at the Intersection of Landscape, Memory, and Place: Archaeology, Heritage Commemoration, and Practice" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Summit Camp was occupied by Chinese railroad workers from 1864 to 1869. It was the longest occupied camp associated with the building of the transcontinental railroad. Workers from the camp excavated a series of tunnels through the granite bedrock of the Sierra Nevada...
Survey and Architecture of Piedra Labrada, Guerrero, Mexico (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent surveying and excavation works on the coast of the state of Guerrero and Oaxaca has shown that this is a region with ample archaeological potential. Dr. Román Piña Chan who made several visits during the sixties in that area, already indicated that the systematic study of the coast, would allow us to understand the development of various groups located...
A Symbolic Consideration of Birds in Teotihuacan and Mexico-Tenochtitlan (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Pre-Columbian material and visual culture encapsulate ideologies and symbolism of the Mesoamerican past. Birds play important roles in Mesoamerican societies, both as daily sources of food and in symbolic and ideological contexts found in ceramic and sculptural iterations combined with archaeological and zooarchaeological contexts. This paper will examine...
Take My Heart, Take My Head: Death among Gods in the Codex Borgia (2021)
This is an abstract from the "New Perspectives on Ritual Violence and Related Human Body Treatments in Ancient Mesoamerica" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ritual violence is well represented in the Codex Borgia, a masterpiece from early sixteenth-century Central Mexico. Narrative scenes depict Venus gods alongside deities honored during seasonal *veintena festivals known from the Valley of Mexico and Tlaxcala. The Aztec Tlacaxipehualiztli festival...
A Tale of Two Peripheries: Recent Excavations at Fracción Mujular, Chiapas, Mexico (2018)
Fracción Mujular is a modest residential site located on the Pacific Coast of Chiapas, Mexico. Long known for the Central Mexican iconography found on its carved stelae, investigations conducted during the winter of 2017 represent the first excavations of the site. This paper presents the results of these excavations, as well as subsequent laboratory analysis. We now know that Fracción Mujular has a history that covers over one thousand years of occupation, from the Early Classic to the Late...
The Tarascan Landscapes of the City of Tzintzuntzan: Dwelling in the Hillsides and in the Lakes (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Landscapes: Archaeological, Historic, and Ethnographic Perspectives from the New World / Paisajes: Perspectivas arqueológicas, históricas y etnográficas desde el Nuevo Mundo" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The ancient prehispanic city of Tzintzuntzan was a cosmopolitan and highly stratified settlement that is distributed between two great hills, the Tariaqueri and the Yahuarato. Its ancient builders gained flat land...
Tarascan Presence in Central South Michoacan. New Researches (2018)
For the last five years the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia set up an archaeological project in the central south portion of the state of Michoacan in the Zirahuen and Balsas river basins. A systematic survey had been made in a large area identifying dozens of sites never previously recorded, some of them with a clear Tarascan component. In spite of, in this paper we will present the results of the research made at the Tarascan sites in the limits of the highlands and the Tierra...
Technical Examination of Mural Painting Fragments from Plaza of the Columns Complex of Teotihuacan: A Comparative Study (2018)
The discovery of numerous Maya-style mural painting fragments during the archaeological excavations in the Plaza of the Columns Complex of Teotihuacan, sprouted debates concerning if these murals were drawn by a Maya artist. In order to compare the pigments composition and the pictorial technique of these paintings with mural paintings from the Maya area from the Classic Period, a non-invasive characterization of the thin ground layer of stucco and the pigments used in the painting discovered...
The Technical Study of Two 16th Century Mexican Pictographic Documents in the NMAI Collection (2019)
This is an abstract from the "From Materials to Materiality: Analysis and Interpretation of Archaeological and Historical Artifacts Using Non-destructive and Micro/Nano-sampling Scientific Methods" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Two mid-16th century Mexican pictographic documents in the collection of the National Museum of the American Indian, a codex on amate paper from the Valley of Mexico and a lienzo on a large cotton textile from Puebla, have...
A Technological Approach of Textile Production in Late Postclassic Tlaxcallan (2018)
Textile production had a pivotal role among Late Postclassic societies including ancient Tlaxcallan, a prominent altepetl of the Puebla-Tlaxcala region. Several scholars have studied prehispanic cloth and garments production based on 16th century historical sources, but using little archaeological evidence. In particular, poor attention has been paid on the technology of textile production based on archaeological artifacts, especially in relation to spinning techniques and the different fibers...
A Technological Reconstruction of Preindustrial Copper Smelting in Central Michoacan, Mexico (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Innovations and Transformations in Mesoamerican Research: Recent and Revised Insights of Ancestral Lifeways" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The earliest evidence for copper metallurgy in Mesoamerica comes from West Mexico, dating to ca. AD 800. Over a period of approximately 700 years, a wide variety of artifacts was manufactured, typically decorations and other valuable non-utilitarian items from several contexts....
Templo Mayor and Representations of the Flower World: agriculture, fire, sacrifice, death, rebirth, and imperialistic agendas (2019)
This is an abstract from the "The Flower World: Religion, Aesthetics, and Ideology in Mesoamerica and the American Southwest" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. One of our primary sources of descriptive information about the Flower World comes from Central Mexican colonial historical documents. While ethnohistorical accounts have portrayed this world with shared beliefs of the floral paradise, this paper provides a complementary scenario, by...
Teotihuacan and Its Interregional Interactions during the Epiclassic Period: New Data from the Suburban Neighborhood of Hacienda Metepec (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Interactions during the Epiclassic and Early Postclassic (AD 650–1100) in the Central Highlands: New Insights from Material and Visual Culture" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Interregional relations are widely documented for Classic period Teotihuacan (AD 1–600), where a rich and extensive network of goods, people, and ideas connected the ancient city with the rest of Mesoamerica. After its political collapse at about...
Teotihuacan Sound Mapping: Exploring the Sonic Sphere of the City of the Gods (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Music Archaeology's Paradox: Contextual Dependency and Contextual Expressivity" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Teotihuacan Sound Mapping Project explores the role that sound and music played in the ancient urban environment of the site. The sound tools and musical instruments of Teotihuacan are re-created and played in different architectural settings, and the instrumental and architectural acoustics subsequently...
Teotihuacan, Chichen Itza, and a Cautionary Tale of Corporate Commerce (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Teotihuacan exhibits a broad trend of shared wealth, exhibited by numerous luxurious apartment compounds whose residents accessed considerable quantities of valuables, as reflected by portraiture of richly clad mid-elites and the mass production of costume elements. Chichen Itza similarly eschewed royal portraiture in favor of works portraying group...
Teotihuacán: Retos Actuales en la Protección de su Patrimonio Arqueológico (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Desde hace varios años se desarrolla un estado de riesgo de pérdida parcial patrimonial en Teotihuacán. Si bien existe un marco normativo en materia de protección de patrimonio cultural arqueológico para Teotihuacán, este se encuentra desarraigado socialmente, derivado de acciones que muestran principalmente la falta de identidad, apreciación y...
Tephrostratigraphic Correlation and Ceramic Seriation in Bayesian Calibration: A Case Study from Coastal Ecuador (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Constructing Chronologies II: The Big Picture with Bayes and Beyond" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The radiocarbon record from sustained archaeological field research in the Jama Valley of coastal Ecuador has provided a robust dataset for Bayesian chronological modeling using multiple archaeological sites from a valley-wide landscape. This paper delves into greater detail on the development of the model’s prior...
Territory and Ritual Landscape in the Colombino Codex: Oaxaca Coast, Mexico (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Landscapes: Archaeological, Historic, and Ethnographic Perspectives from the New World / Paisajes: Perspectivas arqueológicas, históricas y etnográficas desde el Nuevo Mundo" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Through a geographical and historical analysis, we propose to interpret the territorial and ritual organization of the landscapes in the Colombino Codex, which alludes mainly to the heroic feats of Lord 8 Venado...
"They came to loot our treasures": Indigenous, Pirates, and Indigenous-Pirates on the Mexican Pacific Coast (2019)
This is an abstract from the "After Cortés: Archaeological Legacies of the European Invasion in Mesoamerica" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent studies show that the Spanish conquest of the Oaxacan Pacific Coast was shaped, and even orchestrated, by indigenous kingdoms (Zapotecs, Mixtecs) and allied groups (Pochutecs, Chontal) that vied for control over key trading ports. These same indigenous players continued their cycles of conflicts,...
Thirty Years Later. Revisiting the Tarascan City of Las Milpillas and Its Environment, Malpaís de Zacapu, Michoacán (2018)
Thirty years ago, investigations in the city of Las Milpillas in the Malpaís of Zacapu, provided unprecedented insights on the origins of Late Postclassic tarascan social organization. One was the highlighting of a unique kind of urban organization upon lava flows ; as in all four tarascan cities of the Malpaís. Yet, unlike its counterparts, Las Milpillas specificity resides in the fact that a site portion lies upon older volcanics, providing arable lands at hand for the city dwellers to use....
Thread Production in Ocotelulco, Tlaxcallan, Mexico (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Tlaxcallan: Mesoamerica's Bizarro World" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeological excavations undertaken by the Tlaxcallan Archaeological Project have recovered an important sample of spindle whorls from Late Postclassic – Early Colonial (1420 -1540 A.D.) domestic contexts in Ocotelulco, a subsection of the urban site of Tlaxcallan, Mexico. In this paper, we present the results of the analysis of identified whorl...