Guanajuato (State / Territory) (Geographic Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Angela Huster.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In 1565, the Matlatzinca Pablo Ocelotl and the Nahua Alonso Gonzales appeared before a Spanish judge in lawsuit over lands in the community of Tlacotepec, in the Toluca Valley of Central Mexico. While describing the rise and fall of their families under Matlatzinca, Aztec, and Spanish rule, both swore their families were long time residents of community. ...

DOCUMENT Citation Only William Fash. Nawa Sugiyama. Barbara Fash. Mariela Pérez Antonio. Alexis Hartford.

Two distinct excavation contexts from Front D in the Plaza of the Columns Complex yielded pictorial representations in different artistic media that strongly suggest the presence of Maya artists in Plaza 50, decades prior to the famous Teotihuacan "Entrada" of 378 C.E. in the Petén. Excavations at this civic-administrative structure at the heart of the ceremonial core of Teotihuacan have revealed a sequence of numerous plaster floors in Plaza 50 associated with Structure 44, whose form is...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Juliette Testard. Marion Forest. Elsa Jadot.

This is an abstract from the "Mesoamerican Figurines in Context. New Insights on Tridimensional Representations from Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent work conducted in Northern Michoacán by the CEMCA in the Zacapu Basin, 30 km North of the Tarascan core-region, shed light on a specific and poorly defined time period at the region before the Tarascan kingdom: The Early Postclassic. The local phase Palacio ranges from A.D. 900 to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rebecca Sload.

Ceramics and radiocarbon dates indicate that Teotihuacanos ceased using the cave beneath the Sun Pyramid around the middle of the third century CE, at a time when the city was only just entering its "Classic" period florescence. A reverential termination seems quite likely. Evidence also indicates that post termination use of the cave occurred. As there were approximately 1700 years in between cessation of initial use and modern discovery of the cave in 1974, this paper explores the question of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rafael Cruz-Gil.

This is an abstract from the "Ancient Mesoamerican and Andean Cities: Old Debates, New Perspectives" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. While spatial analysis has become commonplace in archaeology, the social implications of mobility and accessibility in urban contexts remain an aspect that can be studied in much more depth. Drawing theories and methodologies from urban design has long been a staple for understanding the lived built environment, and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrew D. Turner.

This is an abstract from the "Bringing the Past to Life, Part 1: Papers in Honor of John M. D. Pohl" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. John Pohl’s groundbreaking investigations of the tandem roles of merchant exchange, alliance building, and migration have caused us to reconceptualize the multiethnic sociopolitical landscapes of central Mexico and Oaxaca in the Epiclassic and Postclassic periods and the social actors that populated them. In the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Emilie Carreón Blaine.

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. The purpose of this collaboration is to present the results of the analysis of a human skull located at the center of the ball court of Santa Rosa, Chiapas, and to review the implications it presents for the study of the Mesoamerican ball game and its relationship to human sacrifice. It is a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elizabeth Baquedano.

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. The Aztecs and other Mesoamerican peoples were exceptionally aware and observant of their natural world and the cycles of nature, particularly the alternation of the seasons. Many of their representations were aptly identified with the dry or...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Davide Domenici.

This is an abstract from the "Bringing the Past to Life, Part 1: Papers in Honor of John M. D. Pohl" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Museo delle Civiltà (Rome) holds two famous Late Postclassic Mesoamerican knife-handles, sculpted in wood and encrusted with a mosaic of turquoise, malachite, lignite, Spondylus, Strombus, mother-of-pearl, and gold. Both represent crouching figures—one anthropomorphic and the other zoomorphic—facing toward the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Hans Roskamp.

This is an abstract from the "Technological Transitions in Prehispanic and Colonial Metallurgy: Recent and Ongoing Research at the Archaeological Site of Jicalán Viejo, in Central Michoacán, West Mexico" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A thorough exploration of the available historical documents from the colonial period demonstrates that Jicalán was one of many prehispanic settlements inhabited by copper mining, smelting, and smithing specialists...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cristian Ramirez.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper will contextualize the diverse range of materials found in several shaft tombs throughout West Mexico. I argue that there are examples of ontological ecologies connected to animals and the seasons by understanding the connections between the landscape and the materials found in the tombs. I explore how the metamorphoses of several animals such...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Véronique Darras. Alejandra Castañeda. Laure Déodat.

This is an abstract from the "Regional and Intensive Site Survey: Case Studies from Mesoamerica" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Alluvial plains in Mexico are still little explored. At first glance their archaeological potential is difficult to appreciate because they are areas of both sedimentary accumulation and destruction caused by intensive agriculture. To compensate these limitations in the Lerma alluvial plain (Michoacan, Guanajuato), we...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nawa Sugiyama. Saburo Sugiyama. Adrian Chase. Tanya Catignani. Taylor Gibson.

In the 1970s, systematic and expansive survey techniques enabled Million to create the first map of Teotihuacan, establishing the limits and density of the city. In this presentation we introduce a newly developed 2.5 dimensional map based on a LiDAR landscape model overlaid with a high-precision architectural map of the city drawn in AutoCAD covering 174 km2 area that extends the Million map by 131 km2. LiDAR technologies have greatly aided archaeological research in many landscapes with high...

DOCUMENT Citation Only James Maffie.

This is an abstract from the "Embodied Essence: Anthropological, Historical, and Archaeological Perspectives on the Use of Body Parts and Bodily Substances in Religious Beliefs and Practices" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Mexica tzompantli (“skull rack”) consisted of multiple, agricultural-style ordered rows of human skull-seeds. As such it constituted an enormous “battery pack,” or milpa, that contained, stored, and radiated the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Edgar Rosales.

This is an abstract from the "The Palace of Xalla in Teotihuacan: A Possible Seat of Power in the Ancient Metropolis" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Mica, a shiny silicate mineral with a layered structure, was highly valued by the Teotihuacan people. Mica has unique physical properties, but we propose that the most striking one was of an optical nature, owing to the fact that it is a multicolored, specular material. The Teotihuacan elite groups...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Laura Filloy. María Olvido Moreno Guzmán. José Luis Ruvalcaba Sil. Edgar Casanova. Cynthya Arellano.

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. In the collections of the world, only six aztec feathered objects exist: three shields and a headdress in Europe, and two shields in Mexico. Mexico’s National Museum of History conserves one shield, made of mammal hide,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alejandra Aguirre. Diego Matadamas.

This is an abstract from the "Ceremonial Lithics of Mesoamerica: New Understandings of Technology, Distribution, and Symbolism of Eccentrics and Ritual Caches in the Maya World and Beyond" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The offerings at the Great Temple of Tenochtitlan contain several lithic artifacts that were miniature versions of ornaments, weapons and attire, which were used to produce religious images. For the Mexicas, the act of placing...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cynthia Otis Charlton. Patricia Fournier.

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. Small ceramic figurines are ubiquitous in the preconquest central highlands of Mexico and are seemingly tied to household ritual. The arrival of the Spanish caused immense change at some levels, some reflected in these small objects. Archaeological evidence shows figurines briefly transitioning, but their...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sofía Pacheco-Forés. María García Velasco.

Within Mesoamerica, ritual violence and human sacrifice have long been topics of anthropological inquiry. In this study, we investigate how the perception of social difference contributed to the selection of victims of ritual violence at an Epiclassic (600-900 CE) shrine site in the Basin of Mexico. The Epiclassic was a period of dramatic political upheaval and social reorganization. In such a volatile geopolitical climate, aspects of individuals’ social identities, such as their residential...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Helen Pollard. Dorothy Washburn.

This is an abstract from the "Ceramics and Archaeological Sciences 2024" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. As a common material and highly plastic technology, in Mesoamerica ceramics are used to define spatial and chronological units of past social, political, and economic structures. In the present study, we compare (1) the use of the type-variety classification as a “chaîne opératoire,” (2) the use of INA and thin-section petrography in sourcing...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrea Torvinen. Matthew A. Peeples.

This is an abstract from the "Scaling Potting Networks: Recent Contributions from Ceramic Petrography " session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ceramic characterization studies often depend on estimates of similarities and differences in assemblages drawn from relatively small samples to address questions regarding a range of social patterns and processes. In most cases, such characterizations do not consider uncertainty due to sampling error nor do they...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Julieta Lopez. Shigeru Kabata. Tatsuya Murakami. Manuel Ramirez.

Tlalancaleca was one of the largest settlements before the rise of Teotihuacan in Central Mexico and has been known for the presence of early talud-tablero facades (a combination of sloping walls and vertical panels) and other cultural elements inherited by Teotihuacan. This paper presents preliminary results of excavations, which were carried at monumental structures at Tlalancaleca. It examines the construction techniques used for monument building (including talud-tablero facades), the degree...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Israel Hinojosa-Balino. Gerardo Gutierrez.

Drone technology has become widely available, easy to use, and relatively inexpensive over the last four years, and archaeologists have embraced it eagerly. Apart from the technological breakthroughs of the UAV platform and its assortment of sensors, we need to interpret these data beyond the beautiful models and topographic measurements. In this paper, we use the concept of monumentality and compare three iconic sites in Central Mexico to understand how their architectural expression correlates...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Daniel Pierce. Brandon Ives.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Located along the Rio San Pedro in west central Nayarit, Mexico, the site of Peñitas was an important precolumbian center with at least two major occupational eras, achieving its greatest prominence during the Early/Middle Postclassic period as a major center within the Aztatlán Tradition. While few sites along the coastal plain have received detailed...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Katherine McCarthy.

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. The murals at Teotihuacan have become a common source of fascination in the archaeology and scholarly considerations of the site. Although the site itself may need no introduction, the murals that decorate its walls have been studied with a level of uncertainty. Often depicting complex and abstract...