Mesoamerica (Geographic Keyword)
1,076-1,100 (2,459 Records)
The stable isotope ratios of carbon, nitrogen and oxygen (δ13C, δ15N, and δ18O values) in animal tissues show promise as environmental indicators. We evaluated the use of chimpanzee hair and leporid (jackrabbit and cottontail) bones. Chimpanzee hair δ13C values correlate negatively with mean annual precipitation (MAP) as expected based on isotope variation in C3 plants, whereas δ15N values do not because of diet selectivity. Leporid bone δ13C values do not correlate with MAP because of leporid...
Initial Series On Stela 5 a Pixoy (1978)
This resource is a citation record only, the Center for Digital Antiquity does not have a copy of this document. The information in this record has been migrated into tDAR from the National Archaeological Database Reports Module (NADB-R) and updated. Most NADB-R records consist of a document citation and other metadata but do not have the documents themselves uploaded. If you have a digital copy of the document and would like to have it curated in tDAR, please contact us at comments@tdar.org.
Inland, Urban vs. Coastal, Rural Salt Production in the Southern Maya Lowlands: The View from Salinas de los Nueve Cerros (2017)
Salinas de los Nueve Cerros is the only non-coastal salt source in the Maya lowlands. For over two millennia, Nueve Cerros’ residents produced massive quantities of salt that was commercialized throughout the western Maya world. Unlike the Caribbean saltworks, the salt here was contained within a large urban zone. The saltworks used a variety of techniques to make the finished product, boiling brine and leaching salt-laden soils as in Paynes Creek but also scraping the salt flats. Each of these...
An Inscribed Flask from Tazumal: Historical Evidence for a Political Relationship between Copan and Western El Salvador (2016)
Re-analysis of an inscribed flask excavated by Stanley Boggs in 1952 from a burial in the main pyramid at Tazumal is the first Classic Maya written text found in a primary deposition context in El Salvador. It is also the first historical evidence for political interaction between Copan and El Salvador, a situation that has long been suggested based on archaeological evidence including the use of Copador ceramics in both Honduras and El Salvador and the presence of other elite Classic Maya goods...
Inscription of the Temple of the Cross at Palenque (1965)
This resource is a citation record only, the Center for Digital Antiquity does not have a copy of this document. The information in this record has been migrated into tDAR from the National Archaeological Database Reports Module (NADB-R) and updated. Most NADB-R records consist of a document citation and other metadata but do not have the documents themselves uploaded. If you have a digital copy of the document and would like to have it curated in tDAR, please contact us at comments@tdar.org.
Inscription, Replication, and Production of Olmec Imagery and Regional Identities (2017)
The Early Formative period exhibits dramatic transformations in imagery and identity throughout Mesoamerica. Focusing on a time period before techniques for mold made and mass produced objects had been achieved, this paper explores replications that involved copies, iterations, and emulations of designs and imagery. At select sites in Mesoamerica, objects have been documented with Olmec-style imagery, some of which have been linked to the Gulf Coast Olmec society; in most cases, the Olmec...
Insights into Maya Ceramic Techniques with Digital X-Radiography (2016)
Based on ethnographic comparisons and the study of ceramic materials, art historians and archaeologists have long inferred techniques of Classic Maya ceramic production, such as the use of coils, slabs, and molds. This paper will review new analytical tools for imaging Maya vessels and what they reveal about ancient ceramic production techniques. Digital x-radiography is one tool in a suite of other non-invasive techniques that are being used to a study a group of ceramic vessels in LACMA’s...
Insights on Arboreal Exploitation in Late Classic San Bartolo, Guatemala from Midden Charcoal Analysis (2016)
This paper presents findings from analysis of the wood charcoal assemblage recovered from two chultun middens from a household site from the Late Classic period at the Maya site of San Bartolo, Guatemala. It will include discussion of fuel gathering strategies, subsistence strategies, how the species identified in the assemblage reflect the relationship the ancient residents of this household had with their local environment, and considerations for future research in reconstructing ancient...
Institutional Analysis of the Social Property System and its Application for the Management of Cultural Resources in Mexico (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In Mexico, archaeological sites are located on private, communal, ejido, federal or vacant land. The exercise of land ownership rights determines the type of technical and legal protection, which is usually assumed by the Mexican State. Generally, to mitigate risks, official archaeologists must carefully collaborate with public, private or common-pool...
"An Instrument for Seeing": The Multivalent Nature of Volcanic Glass in Mesoamerica (2019)
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. Throughout Mesoamerica, obsidian commonly turns up in the form of prismatic blades, knives, projectile points and spearheads—pragmatic tools of daily work and routine life in the Pre-Columbian world. Yet these ordinary usages did...
Integrated compositional analysis of lowland Maya Middle Preclassic pottery at Holtun, Guatemala (2017)
The archaeological site of Holtun is an intermediate sized Maya civic-ceremonial center with documented occupation from the Middle Preclassic through Terminal Classic periods (800 BC – AD 900) featuring well-preserved cultural deposits in multiple contexts. Previously, NAA was conducted on an assemblage from the Middle Preclassic ceramics in which four discrete compositional groups were identified. One such group in particular was composed almost exclusively of Mars Orange Paste Ware, a product...
Integrating and Disintegrating the North Acropolis of Yaxuna, Yucatan, Mexico. (2017)
The North Acropolis of Yaxuna was the primary focus of ritual and administrative life at the site during the Classic period and functioned as a focal point for involving the local population in integrative activities. Yet architectural evidence suggests that this architectural complex changed in function over the course of its use. The acropolis was first built in the Late Formative and was modified up until the Late Postclassic. We argue that the changes we see in the architecture in this...
Integrating Generations on the Formative Maya Landscape: Households and Communities at Tzacauil (2017)
Many Maya centers owe their longevity to the long-term persistence of their households, which were integrated as continuous social units throughout multiple generations. Yet how did the integration of the multigenerational Maya household first emerge? I address this question through the lens of the early farming village of Tzacauil, Yucatán, Mexico. In the Late Formative period (250 BC – AD 250)—the era in which Tzacauil was occupied and abandoned—people in the Maya area began using stone to...
Integrating LiDAR with Pedestrian Survey at the Ancient City of Angamuco, Michoacán, Mexico (2017)
Remote sensing techniques have enhanced studies of ancient urbanism particularly because they have improved the speed of data collection and our abilities to identify the extent of urban sites. Data derived from airborne laser scanning such as LiDAR have been rapidly incorporated to study settlement patterns in order to accelerate the survey process, but also to produce innovative and higher quality data. In this paper, we discuss the use of LiDAR and traditional pedestrian survey data at...
Integrative 3D visualization for spatial analysis and interpretation of rock shelters in Quintana Roo, Mexico (2015)
The integration of multimodal and multiscalar 3D imaging and visualization techniques can be used to explore ritual and non-ritual uses of rock shelters by analyzing potentially meaningful relationships between natural and constructed features. Situating rock shelters within the greater context of Maya subsurface ritual practice may in turn help further define the Maya concept of caves. LiDAR and SFM can be integrated with traditional mapping techniques and ArcGIS to rapidly and precisely...
Inter-site Causeways as Political Infrastructure in the Northern Maya Lowlands (2015)
In the Maya lowlands, several polities oversaw the construction of long causeways that connected regional centers with smaller settlements. As infrastructure, such causeways have been shown to facilitate exchange of basic goods between people at different sites. Archaeologists also view these causeways as political statements that materialize the extent of a polity and emphasize hierarchical relations between settlements on the causeway. Recent research along the 18km long causeway between Uci...
Interaction and Exchange in Late Postclassic Xoconochco (2017)
Xoconochco is located along a well-travelled transportation route that links what is today Central and parts of Southern Mexico with Central America. The region has had cultural and economic ties with its neighbors to the north and to the south for millennia, a pattern that continued into the Late Postclassic period. In this paper we examine the nature of Xoconochco’s involvement in Mesoamerican exchange systems in the Late Postclassic period. We know that Xoconochco’s forest...
Interaction as Movement, Movement as Interaction: The Tripod Vessel in the Maya Region (2015)
Interaction between the central Mexican city of Teotihuacan and the Maya region, and the subsequent influence of Teotihuacan on Maya material culture, has been much discussed. Although many scholars have noted the tripod cylindrical vessel as a diagnostic trait of Teotihuacan and as evidence of interaction and/or influence in other areas of Mesoamerica, further examinations of the tripod ceramic vessels and their imagery found in the Maya area have not been fully developed. The tripod vessel...
Interaction in the Late Classic Kaqchikel Area and Adjacent Pacific Coast: Least Cost Routes (2017)
Least cost analysis of prehistoric nodes of interaction in the Kaqchikel Guatemalan highlands and Pacific Coast indicates the locations of viable travel routes. Several classes of data, such as sculpture, obsidian and ceramics, indicate that there was communication and economic exchange in the Kaqchikel Maya area in the central highlands and Cotzumalguapan Piedmont during the Late Classic Period (600-830 A.D.). Today people walk between neighboring towns on foot paths and roads designed for cars...
The Intermediate Elite of the Puuc Maya Suburbs: Excavations at Terminal Classic Escalera al Cielo (2016)
Seven years of extensive horizontal excavations at the Terminal Classic suburban hilltop complex of Escalera al Cielo have uncovered nearly the full range of social and economic activities undertaken by a class of intermediate elites on the edge of the Kiuic polity. Rather than considering Escalera al Cielo as simply another rung in the settlement hierarchy, we view it as a constituted community that formed and maintained ties of affiliation with the urban elite of Kiuic and with the commoners...
Intermediate Scale Socio-Spatial Units, Collective Action, and the State in Cross-Cultural Perspective (2015)
Collective Action Theory posits that states are the outcome of bargaining among the individuals, groups, and factions that make up the political community. Thus, the nature of intermediate scale socio-spatial units or social organizations that exist hierarchically between individual households and the state (e.g., corporate groups, clans, neighborhoods, communities, patron-client networks, etc.) plays a key role in determining the political-economic strategies employed by the architects of the...
INTERNAL CONTROL AND MANAGEMENT OF CULTURAL TANGIBLE ASSETS IN MEXICO: A first step to their protection (2017)
Mexico is a country with a cultural heritage that has given him a unique identity. We have a wealth of collections ranging from the paleontological and archaeological, to the historical and ethnographic. These collections require a control that will allow both federal institutions and individuals to be aware of what they have under their care, as it is one of the serious problems they face today. One of the main objectives of this brief presentation will be: To give an insight into the control...
An Interpretation of Motifs on Protoclassic Polychrome Pottery from Naj Tunich Cave (2017)
A good deal of academic attention has been focused on the iconographic analysis of Maya painted ceramics, principally from the Late Classic Period and to a lesser extent from the Early Classic. The tradition, however, begins in the first century A.D. during the protoclassic ceramic stage. Virtually no analysis has been undertaken on these earliest Maya artistic expressions probably because the motifs are largely geometric and figural representations are rare. I compiled a motif inventory from...
An Interpretation of the Rock Art in La Cueva de la Huachiza, Santa Clara del Cobre, Michoacán (2017)
The Cueva de la Huachizca is a tectonic cave formed within a basaltic flow in the municipio of Salvador Escalante just south of Lake Patzcuaro, Michoacán. The cave was initially recorded in 2014 by Dr. Jose Luis Punzo-Diaz as part of Proyecto Arqueología y Paisaje del Area Centro Sur de Michoacán (PAPACSM). An investigation of the cave conducted this summer recorded pecked petroglyphs of a man facing an eagle, above a spiral motif. These motifs resemble those from contact period Codice de...
Interpreting Maya Economic Activity Using Paleoethnobotany (2017)
Paleoethnobotany is a subfield of archaeology that requires an extensive knowledge of archaeology and botany. Because highly specialized skills are required, presenting data can be difficult. Botanical data must be conveyed in a way that is understood by fellow archaeologists while adhering to standards of botanists. Conveying this information becomes even more difficult when we begin to combine micro and macro botanical methods. Botanical datasets can contribute to a wide range of topics that...