Distrito Federal (State / Territory) (Geographic Keyword)
251-275 (395 Records)
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 “On Colors” Chapter in the Historia General de Sahagún: Its Structure, Contents, and Contribution to the Knowledge of Technology and Artistic Practices in Ancient Nahua Society (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Bringing the Past to Life, Part 2: Papers in Honor of John M. D. Pohl" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper revisits the structure and contents of the greatest source—the only one of its kind—concerning the knowledge of color technology and, consequently, artistic practices of the ancient Nahua: the chapter on colors in Sahagún’s “Historia General de las Cosas de Nueva España,” which contains a description in...
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...
Overland Travel Routes and Exchange Spheres of Pacific Nicaragua Using Obsidian and Ceramic Data from Chiquilistagua (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Centralizing Central America: New Evidence, Fresh Perspectives, and Working on New Paradigms" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The emergence of social complexity often incorporates social, political, and economic inter- and intra-regional interactions. In this paper we examine the emerging social spheres and exchange networks that developed during the Tempisque period (500 BC–AD 300) among small prehistoric agrarian...
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...
A Possible Sculptural Tradition in Eastern Michoacán and Western State of México (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Archaeology in South Central Michoacán México, Ongoing Studies" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Scant attention has been paid to the past of the current border of the states of Michoacán and Estado de México, though there has been a proposed local archaeological traditions for the region in order to understand archaeological contexts. There are archaeological data about large carved stone sculptures which can lay the...
The Power of Blade Stones in Postclassic Mesoamerica (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 the present discussion, I will focus on mutually constitutive relationships between people and the material world, specifically on gestational dynamics, suggesting that by stone flaking and stone chipping, children (of stone) were fabricated. From the womb of the earth, which is very much a stony...