Distrito Federal (State / Territory) (Geographic Keyword)
201-225 (325 Records)
Experts remain divided about the nature of the sociopolitical system of ancient Teotihuacan, which was one of the earliest and largest urban civilizations of the Americas. Excavations hoping to find compelling evidence of a powerful dynasty of rulers, such as a royal tomb, keep coming away empty-handed. However, the alternative possibility of a corporate or collective government, perhaps headed by a small number of co-rulers, also remains poorly understood. A third option is that the city’s...
New Isotopic Research from the La Ventilla Neighborhood of Teotihuacan: Demography, Migration, and Diet of Two Socioeconomic Groups (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The neighborhood of La Ventilla in the city of Teotihuacan was extensively excavated in the 1990s, during which the largest skeletal collection was recovered at this great urban center. However, it was not until the last several years that stable and radiogenic isotope analysis were conducted on a large-scale at this site. New strontium and oxygen isotope...
New radiocarbon dates confirm late Pleistocene human occupation in the Pampas of Argentina at c. 12,170 14C yrs BP: evidence from extinct horse at the Arroyo Seco 2 site (2015)
The Arroyo Seco 2 site (AS2) is a multi-component open air hunter-gatherer site located in the Pampean Region of Argentina. A recently published monograph summarized the current interpretations of the site, which contains bone remains of 11extinct Pleistocene mammals, including Eutatus seguini, Glossotherium robustum, Megatherium americanum, Paleolama cf. wedelli, Toxodon platensis, Equus (Amerhippus) sp., Glyptodon sp., Hemiauchenia sp., Hippidion sp., Macrauchenia sp., and Mylodontinae. While...
Night Falls on Tenochtitlan (2019)
This is an abstract from the "After Dark: The Nocturnal Urban Landscape & Lightscape of Ancient Cities" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Cortes escaped from Tenochtitlan on "La Noche Triste" in the summer of 1520, but many in his entourage did not – a Mexican woman awake in the night saw them heading across the causeway to the mainland and roused the city to pursue them. The intruders had been under siege by the Tenochca, whose daytime prowess as...
Nomadic Charters: Mimicry and Heterotopia in the Nahua Festival of Quecholli (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Anthropological discourse has placed concerted attention on the role of “axis mundis” in configuring Mesoamerican socio-cosmology. However, in this paper, I highlight the emphasis that many Central Mexican creation-foundation narratives placed on alterity rather than centrality in rendering the boundaries of altepetl “communities.” Nahua cartographic...
Not Only an Archaeological Rescue: Canal de Ohtenco, Case Study of Iztacalco’s Agricultural System (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. "Chinampas" typically are associated with Xochimilco’s agricultural system. However, recent work by INAH’s ‘Dirección de Salvamentos Arqueológicos’ was undertaken at Iztacalco due to modern population growth. Iztacalco is 15 km from Xochimilco but no information existed about the preHispanic population or the site’s economic activities. Therefore, this...
An NSF Broader Impact Story in the Teotihuacan Valley of Mexico: 60 Years in the Making (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. For many, the “broader impact” of a grant proposal frequently involves outcomes that will happen somewhere between immediately and the next five years. Yet, the scope of the broader impact is often unexpected, unknown, and/or will take place many decades later. In 1960, when Eric...
Obsidian Exchange and Political Change: Shifting Patterns of Obsidian Use Across the Late Classic and Postclassic at Fracción Mujular (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Fracción Mujular is a small domestic settlement located on the slopes of Cerro Bernal near the Pacific Coast of Chiapas, Mexico. Founded under the auspices of the Early Classic center of Los Horcones, Fracción Mujular was occupied for nearly one thousand years, persisting through the Collapse of Los Horcones and entering into a period of rapid expansion during...
Obsidian Exchange and Use in Early Formative Chalcatzingo (2018)
In the Middle Formative, Chalcatzingo was one of Highland Mexico’s dominant settlements. At its peak, Chalcatzingo had a well-developed obsidian blade technology and established lines of trade with the Gulf Coast. Chalcatzingo’s role in the exchange of obsidian in earlier periods is less well understood. This paper combines geochemical sourcing and technological analysis of an Early Formative obsidian assemblage from Chalcatzingo in order to elucidate this role. Geochemical sourcing enables a...
Obsidian Technologies at the La Magdalena Site in the Eastern Bajio of Guanajuato, Mexico (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeologists attribute many possible connections between the Bajío and Basin of Mexico during the Formative through Postclassic periods. Elemental analysis of obsidian from the site of La Magdalena (Q-25) in the eastern Bajío region of Mexico both support and challenge different aspects of these connections. Excavations conducted by Beloit College in 1958...
Obsidian Tool Functions at Early Formative Altica, Mexico (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In central Mexican archaeology, tool functions have often been assumed for lithic artifacts based on material types and tool forms, which are classified broadly with labels such as bifaces, scrapers, blades, and flakes. Integrating the method of use-wear analysis derived through experimental archaeology is the most effective way to improve our understanding of...
The Obsidian Trade at Teotihuacan: pXRF Analysis of Changes in Source Location Over Time (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Obsidian played an important social and economic role in ancient Mesoamerica. Because obsidian is a relatively homogenous material, chemical analyses can quantify its elemental concentrations and determine source locations of individual artifacts. This study investigates sources of obsidian procurement at the ancient metropolis of Teotihuacan in central...
The Organization of Prismatic Blade Production at Late Postclassic Tlaxcallan, Central 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. Systems of craft production and exchange in Mesoamerica are often correlated with the socio-political circumstances in which they formed, and such discussions are frequently applied to the organization of lithic industries, including the production of prismatic blades. Systems correlated with direct or centralized distribution networks are...
Pacific Coastal Exchange in Postclassic Mexico: Wealth, Rituals, Feasts, and Marriages (2019)
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. The pioneering fieldwork of Seler, Lumholtz, Saville, Sauer, Vaillant and Elkholm, the Sociedad Mexicana de Antropología to officially recognize "Mixteca-Puebla" as the fourth and last major cultural horizon of the ancient Mexican World in 1945. By 1960 however, H.B. Nicholson had reduced Mixteca-Puebla to a provincial...
The Palace of Xalla at Teotihuacan: An Overview of a Multifunctional Palace (2021)
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. The palace of Xalla is located between the pyramids of the Sun and the Moon. It is a 55,000 m2 palatial complex with plazas, structures, rooms, porticoes, and patios, surrounded by a double wall for patrol walk. It has been excavated extensively by Linda R. Manzanilla and her team from 2000 to 2020,...
Paleoindians from the Basin of Mexico: How do they fit in the early peopling of the Americas? (2019)
This is an abstract from the "The Legacies of The Basin of Mexico: The Ecological Processes in the Evolution of a Civilization, Part 1" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Basin of Mexico is important in the debate on the early peopling of the Americas because several well preserved Paleoindian/Preceramic individuals have been found in the lake sediments/volcanic deposits surrounding the Late Pleistocene Lake. They include: Peñon Woman III,...
Parallel Lives: Aztec and European Elite Marriage Patterns in the Late Postclassic/Renaissance (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 European conquest of the Aztec Empire was eased by strong parallels in Aztec and European courtly behavior in their respective (and contemporaneous) chronological periods, the Late Postclassic (1430–1521) and Renaissance (various dates, 1300s to about 1600). Elite marital...
The People's Response to Change: Settlement Patterns During the Classic-Postclassic Transition in the Puebla-Tlaxcala Valley, Mexico (2018)
The Puebla-Tlaxcala Valley in Central Mexico went through significant settlement, economic, and political shifts during the Classic-Postclassic transition, yet there is no clear picture of what happened during the Epiclassic (600-900CE) or the Early Postclassic (900-1250CE) outside of large primary sites such as Cacaxtla and Cholula. A multi-faceted study was developed to target this issue, with a particular focus on rural sites that supported known large centers. Since the early years of...
Petrographic Perspectives on the Ceramic Complexity in the Lake Pátzcuaro Basin (2018)
Archaeologically known ceramic pastes from the Lake Pátzcuaro Basin, Michoacán, Mexico, involved long-lived paste recipes that have been identified both visually and via neutron activation. This paper focuses upon Late Postclassic Tarascan state-period ceramics (AD 1350-1525) and contextualizes new petrographic data within the regional geology and prior research in order to assess aspects of the longevity and complexity in potter’s paste choices within the basin.
Playing with Your Food to Feed the Masses: A Zooarchaeological Perspective at Teotihuacan, Mexico (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Cultivating Cities: Perspectives from the New and Old Worlds on Wild Foods, Agriculture, and Urban Subsistence Economies" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Animals are invariably integrated into the intricate makings of human culture, providing material evidence to reconstruct ancient urban foodways that influence and structure sociopolitical identities, practices, and ideologies. We explore the concept of production and...
Plaza Size Dataset: Metadata. Supplemental Material for Ossa et al. (2017)
Metadata to accompany the excel file containing information on plaza area and population for Mesoamerican cities
Plaza sizes for Mesoamerican cities (2017)
Plaza area and population for Postclassic Mesoamerican cities analyzed in: Ossa, Alanna, Michael E. Smith, and José Lobo (2017). The Size of Plazas in Mesoamerican Cities: A Quantitative Analysis and Social Interpretation. Latin American Antiquity 28(4): 457-475.
The Politics of Commerce: Aztec Pottery Production and Exchange in the Basin of Mexico, A.D. 1200-1650 (2006)
The relationships between market and political institutions have varied in different times and places, but no market system was (or is) devoid of political involvement. The contrasting approaches of the Aztec empire and Spanish colonial regime to the Basin of Mexico market system are instructive about the ways that commercial agents (producers, traders) respond to “top-down” pressures from state elites to steer and direct the commercial economy to their political advantage. The results of this...
Polychromy in Nahua Art (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Polychromy, Multimediality, and Visual Complexity in Mesoamerican Art" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Through the analysis of several examples of Nahua artistic expression, including the mural paintings of Tlaxcala, the Borgia Group codices, and a wood sculpture encrusted with mosaic, this paper aims to demonstrate that the societies of Late Postclassic central Mexico cultivated a strong interest in polychromy,...
Population Structure in the Valley of Mexico at the Time of Spanish Conquest (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Approaches to Cultural and Biological Complexity in Mexico at the Time of Spanish Conquest" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Cultural processes connected the various regions throughout Mesoamerica. Increased long-distance trade, political alliances, imperial conquest, and spread of religious ideology in the Valley of Mexico facilitated more migration over time. City nucleation to important economic, political, and...