Nayarit (State / Territory) (Geographic Keyword)
376-400 (440 Records)
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...
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...
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...
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...
Tlalancaleca: Ceramics and Interregional Interactions in Formative Central Mexico (2018)
Using ceramics as a proxy for social contact, we discuss a long history of interregional interactions of Tlalancaleca with other areas during the Formative Period. We have observed some clear changes of ceramic assemblages in the transitions between the Middle, Late, and Terminal Formative (or between the Texoloc, Tezoquipan, and Late Tezoquipan phases). While we do not imply that the presence or absence of certain ceramic traditions serves as direct indicators for political control, it is...
Tlaloques, Tiemperos, and Trees: Cultural Models of Nature in Central Mexico (2018)
Abundant water-related art and architecture produced by Teotihuacanos and Mexica-Aztecs in the central Mexican highlands coupled with the rhetoric of today’s farmers from the same region regarding the catastrophic impacts of changes in local seasonal rainfall patterns make it clear that access to rainwater has always been a crucial factor for agricultural success in the semi-arid highlands of central Mexico, especially in communities that lack a reliable water source for irrigation. We collect a...
Tlatilco Revisited (2018)
Since Tlatilco was discovered in the 1930s by Miguel Covarrubias, our understanding of the Early Formative site has changed with a steady flow over the last 80 years. During the 1940s, 50s, and 60s Tlatilco was excavated revealing the dynamic of the site, with the objective to establish the chronology and preserve the many burials. There seems to be extensive evidence that Tlatilco in fact was more than a burial site. The established (calibrated) dates for Tlatilco to be between 1200-900 BCE...
Tlaxcallan Pottery Manufacture and Restricted Networks (2018)
The debate whether pottery sherds equal people or just their ideas has been ongoing since the days of pioneers such as Ford and Spaulding. The advent of new technologies has given a new wind to old debates in which the questions surrounding pottery styles are examined more closely to determine their origin. Compositional analysis has been especially helpful in shedding new light on the relations between artifacts and people. Compositional analysis carried out on Postclassic Tlaxcallan pottery...
“To Kill” or “To Sacrifice?” Sahagún and the Translation of Mortal Violence (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Misinformation and Misrepresentation Part 1: Reconsidering “Human Sacrifice,” Religion, Slavery, Modernity, and Other European-Derived Concepts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Spanish accounts from sixteenth-century colonial New Spain tell us that the Aztecs “sacrificed” humans, a notion that has been corroborated and expanded by scholars from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, including archaeology,...
Torvinen (2018) - EPMA-WDS raw data for clay samples (2018)
These elemental data were collected using the Quantitative Wavelength Dispersive Spectroscopy technique with the JEOL JXA-8530F Electron Probe Microanalyzer (EPMA-WDS) at the John M. Crowley Center for High Resolution Electron Microscopy at Arizona State University supervised by Dr. Axel Wittmann. Based on the methodology developed by Abbott and Lack (2013), a series of five assays were run per sample at 300X magnification in a relatively inclusion free area of clay matrix (spot area = 20 um)...
Torvinen (2018) - EPMA-WDS raw data for sherd samples (2018)
These elemental data were collected using the Quantitative Wavelength Dispersive Spectroscopy technique with the JEOL JXA-8530F Electron Probe Microanalyzer (EPMA-WDS) at the John M. Crowley Center for High Resolution Electron Microscopy at Arizona State University supervised by Dr. Axel Wittmann. Based on the methodology developed by Abbott and Lack (2013), a series of five assays were run per sample at 300X magnification in a relatively inclusion free area of clay matrix (spot area = 20...
Torvinen and Nelson (2020) Supplemental Material - Refinement of the Chronology of La Quemada, Zacatecas, Mexico, Using Ceramic Seriation (2020)
During the Epiclassic period (AD 600–900), the northern frontier of Mesoamerica consisted of a regional network of polities focused on large, hilltop centers, including the site of La Quemada in the Malpaso Valley of Zacatecas, Mexico. Although extensive archaeological research has been conducted at the site, the refinement of its chronology is essential for two reasons: (1) to establish the chronological control necessary to characterize social processes diachronically and (2) to ensure that...